In this singularly powerful novel, bestselling author Louis Bayard brings Oscar Wilde’s wife, Constance, and two sons out from the shadows of history and creates a vivid and poignant story of secrets, loss and love.

In September 1892, Oscar Wilde and his family have retreated to the idyllic Norfolk countryside for a holiday. His wife, Constance, has every reason to be happy: two beautiful sons, her own work as an advocate for feminist causes, and a delightfully charming and affectionate husband and father to her children, who also happens to be the most sought-after author in England. But with the arrival of an unexpected houseguest, the aristocratic young poet Lord Alfred Douglas, Constance gradually --- and then all at once --- comes to see that her husband’s heart is elsewhere and that the growing intensity between the two men threatens the whole foundation of their lives.

THE WILDES takes readers on the emotional journey of this family, moving from the Italian countryside, where Constance Wilde flees from the aftermath of Oscar’s imprisonment for homosexuality, to the trenches of World War I and an underground bar in London’s Soho, where Oscar’s sons, Cyril and Vyvyan, must grapple with their father’s legacy. And in a brilliant feat of the imagination, act five reunites the entire cast in a surprising, poignant and tremendously satisfying tableau.
 
With Louis Bayard’s trademark sparkling dialogue and deep insight into the lives and longings of all his characters, THE WILDES almost could have been created by Oscar Wilde himself. Lightly told but with hidden depths, it is an entertaining and dramatic story about the human condition.

Audiobook available; read by Elisabeth Rodgers, Damian Lynch and P.J. Ochlan