Ralph Truitt is a wealthy man. He's the titan of his small northern Wisconsin town, the king of all he surveys, and he's decided to take a new wife after 20 years of self-inflicted solitude. Truitt's ill-fated choice of his first wife Emilia, a breathtaking Italian beauty of noble but impoverished descent, was driven by flames of youthful passion, and he's determined not to make the same mistake twice. His newspaper advertisement states: "Country Businessman Seeks Reliable Wife. Compelled by Practical, Not Romantic Reasons. Reply by Letter." His selection of Catherine Land from a bevy of applicants is based as much on the plain, simple face peering out from her photograph as on the chaste and practical nature of her written response.
Catherine's initial deception is obvious to Truitt from the moment she steps off the train: her plain clothes and severe hair can't conceal the fact that she is strikingly, painfully beautiful. Truitt's rage mounts as he takes Catherine's bags. He's still emotionally crippled by Amelia's deception two decades ago. Despite his obsessive efforts to afford his first wife every continental comfort and extravagance, including the replication of a palatial Italian villa filled with priceless art and furniture, Amelia engaged in an extended affair with her Italian piano teacher for years under Ralph's very nose. Eventually, she eloped with her Italian lover, leaving Ralph with a handicapped and soon-to-die daughter, a dark-eyed son of questionable parentage, and an empty palace that continues to mock him with its ornate folly.
Why would Catherine have enclosed the photo of another woman? Did she even write the letters she sent him? If not, who did, and what has happened to her? Is Catherine the orphaned daughter of missionary parents, as she claims, or is she an adventuress with an eye to his fortune? If she's the latter, how can he expect her to support him in his quest to find his prodigal "son" and heir Antonio, who ran away at the age of 14? All of these questions and more rage through Truitt's brain over the next few weeks, even as he realizes that the urges of his body are once again engaged in a conspiracy to betray him.
Dark religious themes and gothic suspense saturate Goolrick's page-turning tale. Cities are portrayed as early 20th century Gomorrahs, where gilded opera boxes and lacquered gambling tables conceal an underlying rot of diseased flesh and moral decay, but the stark winter white countryside of northern Wisconsin also carries its own stain beneath the snow. Husbands turn on their wives in senseless violence; entire families go seemingly insane; women wander into the snow and never return. The author is clear about the source of this rural madness: long winters and religion gone crazy.
Each character in the story bears a blot of carnal guilt on his/her psyche that threatens to consume everything, and in each case, this blot had its beginning with sexual desire. As a young man, Truitt wrestled desperately against his natural sexual impulses due to the admonitions of his mother, a puritanical monster who once demonstrated the agony of hell to her young son by repeatedly thrusting a needle deep under his fingernail. All of the main characters have indulged in perceived sexual iniquities, and their response to this guilt is one of the more compelling aspects of Goolrick's novel. Some decide to punish themselves with self denial, spiritual flagellation, and stoic fatalism. Others punish themselves by perversely embracing and accelerating their iniquities to the point of physical endangerment. In both cases, a thinly repressed death wish is at work.
Can the root of all this guilt -- attraction between a man and a woman -- ever be the catalyst for healing and self-forgiveness? If the world is full of pitfalls and temptations, how can you sort out which attraction is a call to grace? In the face of human failure, does it make sense to surrender to nihilism, or is there reason to hope? Goolrick's book examines deep psychological issues of guilt and forgiveness while also producing a suspense-filled gothic narrative that engages the reader from start to finish.
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