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The Wife's Tale: Book summary and reviews of The Wife's Tale by Lori Lansens

The Wife's Tale

The Wife's Tale
A Novel
by Lori Lansens
Published in USA Feb 2010,
368 pages.

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The Wife's Tale Summary

On the eve of their Silver Anniversary, Mary Gooch is waiting for her husband Jimmy - still every inch the handsome star athlete he was in high school - to come home. As night turns to day, it becomes frighteningly clear to Mary that he is gone. Through the years, disappointment and worry have brought Mary's life to a standstill, and she has let her universe shrink to the well-worn path from the bedroom to the refrigerator. But her husband's disappearance startles her out of her inertia, and she begins a desperate search.

For the first time in her life, she boards a plane and flies across the country to find her lost husband. So used to hiding from the world, Mary finds that in the bright sun and broad vistas of California, she is forced to look up from the pavement. And what she finds fills her with inner strength she's never felt before. Through it all, Mary not only finds kindred spirits, but reunites with a more intimate stranger no longer sequestered by fear and habit: herself.

The Wife's Tale Reviews

"Lansens's handling of her eventual transformation into someone capable of compassion and acceptance is handled with a light but assured touch." - Publishers Weekly

"Starred Review. Lansens's portrait of a woman who hides behind the Kenmore as protection from life's heartache is earthy and primal in its pain. ... Highly recommended." - Library Journal

"While Mary's evolution is all too predictable, Lansens never adequately explains the more enigmatic, sympathetic Gooch. Redemption Lite." - Kirkus Reviews

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Lori Lansens Author Biography

Lori Lansens was born in July 1962 in small-town Chatham, Ontario, a rural community near the border to Detroit, Michigan, where she spent the first eighteen years of her life. From early on she was inspired by Chatham’s unique history, which plays a role in her first book, the acclaimed novel Rush Home Road. Chatham's landscape and history also served as inspiration for The Girls and The Wife's Tale.

Lori Lansens has also written several films and lives in southern California with her husband and two children.

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