With his Northern gothic novel A Reliable Wife, acclaimed memoirist Robert Goolrick creates an unforgettable heroine—a mail-order black widow.

When a grown man goes by the diminutive “Robbie,” you can usually assume he’s a) very in touch with his inner child or b) Southern. And Robert “Robbie” Goolrick, is clearly both. A former ad copywriter originally from Virginia, Goolrick is the author of the much-touted debut novel, A Reliable Wife.

Wife is not Goolrick’s first book—that would be his critically acclaimed 2007 memoirThe End of the World as We Know It.In one way, at least, Wife—which was the No. 1 pick of independent book sellers and has been sold in a dozen countries—is very different from The End of the World, a disturbingly calm account of his growing up and being sexually abused by his father in a respectable Virginia family. The new book is a novel, for one thing, and it takes place in Wisconsin in 1907. Still, the story of a powerful man estranged from his grown son, a man who sends away for a wife and gets more than he bargained for, echoes the themes in Goolrick’s memoir and his life.Like World, Goolrick notes, it concerns the relationship between two men and a woman and property.And like World, it springs from Goolrick’s childhood memories and themes, and reads like the kind of dramatic Southern story Goolrick says he grew up hearing from his parents and their friends.

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