The Sunday Wife
 Cassandra King
 (Reviewed by The Editor - Rebecca Brown)
 2002 Hyperion
  ISBN: 0786869054


Married for 20 years to a handsome, ambitious minister of a prestigious church, Dean Lynch has never quite adjusted to the role of Sunday wife.

Less so after meeting a women in the new parish to which her husband has been assigned. As their friendship blossoms, Dean finds herself challenging her placid, faceless preacher's wife position, & then the hurricane comes & changes everything.

While reading The Sunday Wife, I kept hearing Martina McBride's jaunty song When God-fearing Women Get The Blues, except this woman doesn't have the same spunk. Dean Lynch did, once upon a time, when she was young, just starting to become a dulcimer player, in awe of & filled with gratitude for the handsome seminarian courting her.

As The Sunday Wife opens, Dean is a woman on the run, disappearing after a score of years married to a preacher man on the rise to bishophood, & she is remembering what drove her away & why she has landed up in a friend's cottage on the Gulf Coast of Florida.

Memories of when she first met Ben, why she married him & what their life had been like moving from one parish to the next, as she dutifully learnt to be the preacher's wife, even though she didn't have much call for the religious life. In the thrall of her husband's silver tongue, & his parishioners' avid hero-worship, Dean simply does what's expected of her: playing her dulcimer at church ceremonies, hosting the church women's meetings & keeping the manses visitor-ready.

For all the years of her marriage, she's not given much thought about having babies. There was one time which ended in disaster, after which she shrivelled back into her shell, as her husband dictated all that she should be, given from whence she had sprung. Rough roots, parents dead, all best forgot! In the tradition of Svengali or Henry Higgins, Benjamin Lynch sets about remaking his young unformed wife, & she earnestly bends to her lessons. Except when it comes to her dulcimer. Cassandra King describes what so many women have had to learn as their men change them into the wives they wish them to become. Until she meets Augusta Holderfield, Dean Lynch has been a fine facsimile of "the perfect wife."

The Sunday Wife reminds me of Daphne du Maurier's classic oft-read Rebecca, in that the narrator is as wishy-washy a woman as I've ever met, with the occasional flare of introspection & personality. Otherwise, she's the go-between for all the secrets of other people, & do they have secrets!

I was a bit annoyed that Cassandra King had her heroine jump out of the frying pan of her barren marriage into the fire of a future, possibly fertile, relationship, love notwithstanding. I realize we still want women safely married off. Biology abhors a single woman, don't you know! Society considers a spinster a bit of a danger, & rather worthless, to boot, even if she has the makings of a world-class dulcimer player! I got the feeling that the author couldn't think of anything else a woman might want to do, to be, than someone's wife!

The Sunday Wife is not my usual fare, I'm not big on domestic imbroglios, deceit among spouses, & silver-tongued religious men, however, Cassandra King has written a pot-boiler filled with secrets, memories, moments of intense discomfort, adventures, & a woman on the verge of discovering herself, & written it very well!
(09/01/02)

Rebecca