Wife & Wife: A Novel

Summary

A new masterpiece of modern queer fiction, Wife & Wife is a sharply observed and deeply moving story of love, discovery, and defiance.

It is 1955 in the affluent suburb of Pearl’s Cove, New York. Twenty-five-year-old housewife and mother of two Ruth Wolf is a glamorous platinum blonde who secretly devours lesbian pulp fiction shoplifted from the local drugstore. But nothing about her clandestine reading has prepared her for what will happen when she meets Sylvie Fein, a socialite who pours her energy into making art while her children are at school. Their connection is electric and instantly threatens to upend their dutiful, traditional lives.

Dazzled and in love, Ruth and Sylvie struggle to find a way to be together for more than half a century, wrestling with the expectations of their families and neighbors and the undeniable force of their desire for one another. From the stifling kitchens of the 50s to the triumphant coming of gay marriage in 2011, this is a sharpy observed, wryly funny and deeply moving journey through time and the human heart.

Wife & Wife transforms a single love affair between two ordinary women into a sweeping narrative of discovery and reinvention, mirroring the profound cultural upheavals that redefined marriage and family in America.