The Doctor's Wife

“The memory starts here, in my apron pocket, with the gun.”
 
So begins The Doctor’s Wife, a stunning debut novel about four people and the cataclysmic intersection of their lives.  Michael is a rising OB/GYN at a prominent private practice in Albany, New York; he also moonlights at a local women’s health clinic.  But Annie, his wife, has become tired of her workaholic husband’s absences, and the soccer-mom lifestyle has worn thin. She begins a passionate love affair with bad-boy, fading celebrity painter Simon Haas—an affair that quickly goes awry when Simon’s wife Lydia, who is also the model upon whom he built his career, discovers the truth.  

Abortion, local evangelism, marital disenchantment, and the rifts of social class:  Brundage takes on the fault lines of our era with a deft hand.   

“Appearances are deceiving in this psychological thriller . . . a compelling read.”— The Boston Globe

“The memory starts here, in my apron pocket, with the gun.”

So begins The Doctor's Wife, a stunning debut novel about four people and the cataclysmic intersection of their lives. Michael is a rising OB/GYN at a prominent private practice in Albany, New York; he also moonlights at a local women's health clinic. But Annie, his wife, has become tired of her workaholic husband's absences, and the soccer-mom lifestyle has worn thin. She begins a passionate love affair with bad-boy, fading celebrity painter Simon Haas—an affair that quickly goes awry when Simon's wife Lydia, who is also the model upon whom he built his career, discovers the truth.

Abortion, local evangelism, marital disenchantment, and the rifts of social class: Brundage takes on the fault lines of our era with a deft hand.

“A fine debut, full of psychological suspense, plot twists and turns, malice disguised as religion, the taint of incest, and cheating spouses.”—Library Journal

“No character inhabiting this story will escape unscathed from the choices they've made... [a] well-crafted work.” —Ms. Magazine

Publishers Weekly

Set against the backdrop of the battle for abortion rights, this timely but stilted debut thriller features a perfect yuppie couple. Michael Knowles is a successful OB-GYN and his wife, Annie, is a popular journalism professor; they have two precious kids and a big, airy home in upstate New York. But once Michael accepts a position at the only abortion clinic in town, the already heavy strain that his doctor's schedule puts on their marriage sends Annie into the arms of a colleague, notorious painter Simon Haas. Meanwhile, Michael receives increasingly hostile threats from creepy antiabortion activists, suggesting that one, or both, of the Knowles are targets of a vicious terror campaign. The painter's childlike young wife, Lydia, as a menacing, tormented Bible-thumper scarred by a harsh, loveless upbringing, is the enigma that fuels Brundage's examination of what happens when we are drawn to the very things that promise to destroy us. But the lessons here are heavy-handed and the characterizations mechanical. The bad guys wear mirrored sunglasses as they force Michael off the road; the good guys wear jackets emblazoned with angel's wings; and the dialogue is delivered in short sound bites scripted for a TV cliffhanger. The Knowles' storybook marriage takes a number of dark, twisted turns, but the lack of character nuance and depth blunt Brundage's stab at psychological suspense. Agent, Linda Chester. (June 21) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Elizabeth Brundage is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and winner of a James Michener Award. Her short fiction has been published in the Greensboro Review, Witness Magazine, and New Letters, and she contributed to the anthology I've Always Meant to Tell You: Letters to Our Mothers.