A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick

This is a first novel for Goolrick and I hope that many more will follow. This book takes place in the early part of the twentieth century. Ralph Truitt lives in very cold and snowy Wisconsin. He has lived a very lonely life for 20 years. He places a classified ad for a reliable wife. He waits at the train station for the woman he hopes will satisfy his needs. The woman who steps off the train is not the woman in the picture. She has a cover story for that - in fact she has lots of things planned out - that is why she is carrying arsenic in her bag. It's an intriguing story and different from the run-of-the-mill mail-order bride stories! I really enjoyed it.