Wives and Mistresses - Hardcover

Morris, Suzanne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385190999 ISBN 13: 9780385190992

Publisher: Doubleday, 1986

Synopsis

Spans several generations in two Houston families, the Lieders and the Gerrards, and explores the lives of four women, their friendship to each other, their marriages and affairs, and the dark secrets surrounding their existence

About this title

About the Author:

Suzanne Morris is a native of Houston. She lives with her family in Baytown, Texas. Her published novels include Galveston, Keeping Secrets, Skychild and Wives and Mistresses. Her current work in progress is a two-volume novel set in England and the United States. She is also writing a film adaptation of this work.

From Publishers Weekly:

Morris's (Galveston eyes are again on Texasthis time, to observe the rise of Houston and two of its founding families. Narrated by four women whose histories span the past 100 years, the novel offers a summary view of King Cotton deposed by oil barons and a more intimate one of cotton-headed maidens triumphing over a host of smarmy men. Alvereda's father keeps her at home just to reject her. Though she marries kindly Neal Gerrard, she must fight off the sexual advances of his business partner, David Leider. Leider has locked himself into a loveless marriage, an act which is to become a family tradition. His daughter Elzyna thinks her husband is trying to kill her, while her daughter, Senta, has one who almost succeeds. Only Robin manages to break the mold by marrying a Gerrard of the '60s who, unlike his relatives, is not into knives or poison. The characters here seem to speak with a single voice, shorn of local color, which uses such slang as "swell" or "phony" in both 1887 and 1960a voice whose lack of fiber eventually flattens the events it describes.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 1986
• ISBN 10: 0385190999
• ISBN 13: 9780385190992
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 584