cover image By the Book

By the Book

Susan Mary Malone. Baskerville Publishers, $18 (247pp) ISBN 978-1-880909-00-3

This painfully detailed first novel limns the psyche of a Fort Worth housewife in her late 30s whose loutish, manipulative husband subjects her to physical and emotional abuse in the name of Jesus Christ and ``family values.'' Childless, jobless and pathetically dependent on her husband Roger, Nettie Rhodes has little contact with the world outside her immaculately tended home other than weekly visits with her feminist, ``heathen'' sister Becca and nieces Sara and Jeannie. The author fails to make convincing Nettie's abject submission to Roger, an obvious alcoholic who engages in extramarital affairs, is obsessed with sadistic pornography, beats his wife mercilessly and never attends church, although he insists that she do so. The story becomes somewhat more believable when a family tragedy forces Nettie to change her life and two elderly aunts help her understand how she has been an accessory to her victimization. But the book never really recovers from its early portrayal of a grim existence that doesn't quite ring true. ( May )