The Glass Wives

Is there an upside to your ex-husband dying (and taking his alimony with him), leaving your 10-year-old twins fatherless? For Evie Glass, there is: she'll finally be rid of the bleached, tattooed Nicole, her ex's mistress-turned-wife. Evie didn't count on being left penniless, though. Then Nicole offers a solution to her money woes--she, unbelievably, wants to cohabitate! So Nicole moves in, whipping the gossip mill into a frenzy in Evie's suburban Chicago town.

Amy Sue Nathan's The Glass Wives cooks up a Modern Family-esque premise as ex-wife and new wife come together to grieve their respective losses. Evie struggles to comfort her devastated children while she adjusts to living with her ex-husband's widow, who turns out to be shockingly sympathetic--with much more to her than one bad choice of husband-poaching. Soccer games and school fundraisers become comically horrifying encounters with nosy neighbors determined to judge the unusual arrangement and uneasy truce the two women have formed. The outcome of this unusual tale may come as a surprise, but Nathan's genuine characters, beautifully descriptive prose and her knack for creating a realistic portrait of an untraditional albeit loving family are refreshing. --Natalie Papailiou, author of blog MILF: Mother I'd Like to Friend

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