A reliable wife

Set in rural Wisconsin in 1909, Ralph Truitt stands alone on a train platform waiting for the woman who answered his newspaper advertisement for "a reliable wife." But when Catherine Land steps off the train from Chicago, she's not the "simple, honest woman" that Ralph is expecting.

Colon (Anatomy)

Malden, Carla. (2011). Afterimage: A Brokenhearted Memoir of a Charmed Life. Globe Pequot Pr 2011.


Kirkus Reviews
A searing account of how the author coped with her husband's year-long struggle with colon cancer and his untimely death. Emotionally raw from start to finish, the story makes for admittedly difficult reading. What saves it from sinking into pure melodrama are its fleeting moments of humor and the fact that it also celebrates a rare and profound love that transcended death. A brutally candid memoir of the "all-consuming and profoundly uncomplicated" power of grief.

Passing

Sandweiss, Martha A. (2009). Passing strange: a Gilded Age tale of love and deception across the color line. New York: Penguin.

Kirkus: An intriguing look at long-held secrets, Jim Crow, bad faith—and also, as Sandweiss observes, "love and longing that transcends the historical bounds of time and place."

Portraits of a marriage

Márai, Sándor. (2011). Portraits of a marriage. translated from the Hungarian by George Szirtes. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.