Fiction: A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick

This book cracked me up, which was possibly not the author's intention. As a resident of rural Wisconsin reading a book set in that same state in the early 1900s,  I found the author's use of a snowy frozen winter to illustrate madness and despair to be highly, well, entertaining.
I was so intrigued by this Virginia native author's descriptions of WI winter craziness that I read the epilogue (which I normally do not) and discovered that Mr. Goolrick had been greatly influenced by Wisconsin death trip by Michael Lesy, a peculiar little piece of WI literature composed of of photographs and clippings of local insanity from late 19th century newpapers in the Black River Falls area.
A Reliable Wife was alright as a story, but for me the descriptions of insanity and madness in rural Wisconsin were it's greatest retaining value. I was glad NOT to be reading this book in the winter,  which might have made me cry instead of laugh.
For a more detailed description, below is the summary from MORE:

1907: Abandoning her worldly life, traveling to a remote Wisconsin town in the dead of winter, trusting her future to a man she had never met--such was Catherine Land's new beginning. But there was an ending in sight as well, an ending that would redeem the treachery ahead, justify the sacrifice, and allow her to start over yet again. That was her plan. For Ralph Tritt, the wealthy business man who had advertised for "a reliable wife," this was also to be a new beginning. Years of solitude, denial, and remorse would be erased, and Catherine Land, whoever she might be, would be the vessel of his desires, the keeper of his secrets, the means to recover what was lost. That was his plan.--Publisher description.