The Wife's Tale

All Books are second hand
Lori Lansens
9780316069311

A plaguing hunger and a purring Kenmore refrigerator monopolize Mary Gooch's 43-year-old existence. Her "obeast" consumes her conscious moments and has paralyzed her 25-year marriage. In her third novel, The Wife's Tale (Little, Brown), Lori Lansens revisits the small Ontario town of Leaford (also the setting of her first two, Rush Home Road and The Girls) and finds a seemingly content Mary tipping the scale at 302 pounds and finding a fresh note from her coward husband, Jimmy Gooch, who deposited $25,000 into their joint account before disappearing on the eve of their silver anniversary. Armed with a never-before-used cellphone, debit card, passport, and gumption, Mary boards a jet plane for the first time and sets out south across the U.S. border in hopes of bringing her husband back. Before Mary's trip abroad, "Jimmy Gooch was like a vital organ whose function was mysterious but without which, she believed, she would perish." When she touches down, her quest turns into a personal adventure of unmasking her nagging addiction and constant worry and becoming a Mary Gooch who is fulfilled, accomplished, and balanced.