Meagan Church, author of THE GIRLS WE SENT AWAY and THE LAST CAROLINA GIRL, returns with yet another emotionally charged trip into one of the darkest corners of America’s history: its subjugation of women. In THE MAD WIFE, readers are invited into a quiet, picturesque 1950s neighborhood where one woman --- despite the Good Housekeeping schedule posted responsibly to her kitchen wall --- has started to unravel.

Greenwood Estates is quintessential 1950s America: the cookie-cutter houses boast the same easy-to-manage layout, the wives are perfectly coiffed and ready to throw a dinner party at a moment’s notice, and the husbands leave their homes to head to their offices in the city, none the wiser to their wives’ busy lives. For the past five years, Lulu Mayfield has dedicated herself to adopting the same hairstyles, dinner recipes and even cleaning schedules as the other wives on her street. But on the night we meet her, she is hiding a secret: she is pregnant with her second child, the one who will “make her family complete.” She isn’t sure she’s up for it, though, as she’s still reeling from the trauma of her first birth and postpartum blues. However, when her husband realizes her secret at their annual New Year’s party, she has no choice but to paste on a blissful smile and toast to her new responsibility.

"...an instant classic, on par with THE BELL JAR and HOUSEKEEPING. I read THE MAD WIFE in one breathless sitting, and I doubt any reader will be able to put it down for even a second."

Of course, Lulu’s life isn’t all dull routine. Suffering from insomnia since a childhood tragedy crippled her beloved brother, Lulu spends her nights dutifully clipping S&H Green Stamps that she can trade in for personal items: a lamp for three-and-a-quarter completed books; a framed painting for two books; a tricycle for her son, Wesley, for two-and-a-half. She adores Wesley and has made friends with several of the wives in her neighborhood, a group of women who have adopted the same naptime routine for all of their children so they can spend the afternoons playing spades and gossiping, a pack of cigarettes never more than a hand away.

But Lulu has begun to notice something that sets her apart from her fellow wives. While they seem to emerge from their cocoons of housewifery energized, refreshed and proud, she often feels dulled and cast aside. Even her own home doesn’t feel worth the trouble of adhering to a strict cleaning schedule. After all, besides the cheap items she has bought using Green Stamps, the entire house --- decor and all --- was designed and selected by her mother-in-law.

Lulu’s pregnancy passes quickly, and she returns home with Esther, her baby girl, the one who will elevate the Mayfields into the realm of “having it all.” But it isn’t easy having a four-year-old and a newborn, and with her husband back to work on her very first day postpartum, she starts to crack under the pressure. It isn’t long before the laundry is left undone, the home-cooked meals she used to labor over for hours become aluminum-infused TV dinners, and she stops getting dressed --- a criminal offense for a 1950s housewife.

On top of that, the house across the street, the one she dreamed of one day owning herself, has been sold to a new, strange family. The husband is clearly older, his white hair combed over in order to hide his bald spot, but it is the wife who chills Lulu to the bone. Bitsy stares into space one minute, then plasters on an eerie grin the next. And on Lulu’s late-night feedings with Esther, she watches as Bitsy faces the night, staring out her window until her husband comes to collect her. Lulu believes that something is off with her new neighbors, and as reports of “despondent wives” and lobotomies start to make waves, she worries that Bitsy is a portent of more to come.

As Lulu continues to observe her strange neighbors, her hold on her own life starts to fray. Her husband, put off by her slovenly state, no longer looks at her that way anymore; her friends have started to drop in unexpectedly, always when the house is at its worst; and although she loves her children, the daylight calls of “mommy, look!” and the nighttime cries of her nursing daughter are starting to grate. Worst of all, during an important dinner with her husband’s boss, Lulu completely fails at producing one of her “famous” gelatin salads (and yes, the recipes in this book will have you reading through your fingers), potentially costing her husband the promotion he so desperately wants.

With her failures all coming to light, Lulu is diagnosed with the dreaded H word: hysterics. But as she begins her treatment --- a mind-numbing pill that softens the edges of her anxiety, but also dulls everything else she enjoys in life --- it becomes apparent that while she has been focused on the strange woman across the street, she has missed the mad wife in the mirror. Is her ailment truly hysterics, or even madness? Or is it survival, the desperate cries and clawing of a woman trapped in a gilded cage, with no life of her own?

THE MAD WIFE is a true domestic horror, the kind in which there are no monsters or ghosts, but rather the restrictive, suffocating walls of womanhood, motherhood and mental illness. Meagan Church is quick to set a tone and atmosphere of suspense, a “don’t look behind the curtain” promise that despite Greenwood Estates’s glossy surface, something dark lurks behind the pasted-on smiles of its housewives.

But this is not just psychological suspense, as Church also dives deep into the tender, emotional moments of marriage and motherhood, asking how something so blissful and perfect can turn into something suffocating and painful. Paired with Lulu’s childhood traumas, her descent into madness paints a picture not of a crazy lady, but of a woman forced to grapple with unmanageable truths and a life that has never really been her own. It’s a sobering, unflinching portrayal of women’s roles in the 1950s, and Church handles each gelatin salad, Green Stamp and cigarette flick with natural aplomb, almost as if she lived it all herself.

Add to that a shocking --- and I do mean shocking --- twist, and you have the makings of an instant classic, on par with THE BELL JAR and HOUSEKEEPING. I read THE MAD WIFE in one breathless sitting, and I doubt any reader will be able to put it down for even a second.