The Other Wife

Thomas-Kennedy enthralls with this story about a marriage threatened by class tensions and a messy love triangle. Zuzu, who is mixed-race and grew up as a “Western Mass Hick,” feels unappreciated and undesired in her marriage to Agnes, a successful lawyer praised by others for her “girl-next-door” looks, which Zuzu takes to mean “white.” She finds herself longing for Cash, with whom she’s been close since college, but their friendship never blossomed into romance. When Zuzu’s father dies, she returns from New York City, where she and Agnes are raising a seven-year-old, to her hometown in Massachusetts. There, she has an opportunity to see Cash, who has recently hinted that he’s unhappy in his own marriage, and to determine if he’s the one who got away or if she was meant to be with Agnes all along. Told in Zuzu’s emotionally wrought and elegant narration, the novel slowly gathers the full picture of her complicated relationships with Agnes and Cash, from meeting them both 20 years earlier to marriage and having children. Along the way, Thomas-Kennedy highlights Zuzu’s tribulations as well as her flaws. Readers won’t want to miss this aching and all-too-real portrayal of a woman’s search for fulfillment. Agent: Claudia Ballard, WME. (July)