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Book Spotlight : A More Obedient Wife

More Obedient Wife : A Novel of the Early Supreme Court by Natalie Wexler

Call Number: PS3623 .E954 M67 2006

ISBN: 0615135161

Publication Date: 2007

Looking for a relaxing book to read over the holiday season? Curious about the early American legal system, but not in the mood for a dry history? Librarian Erin Gow reviews A More Obedient Wife: A Novel of the Early Supreme Court by Natalie Wexler, one of the many fictional and historical biographies available at the Law Library.

This is an interesting novel examining the early years of the United States and the foundation of the US Supreme Court told from the perspective of women living at the time. The bulk of the novel is a fictional account of the lives of two wives of early Supreme Court Justices, whose lives and personalities are wildly different. The fictional account is interspersed with snippets of real letters sent between the historical characters whose lives have been fictionalized in this book. The letters provide not only a backbone for the story, but also a sense of reality and immediacy that lends depth to the fictional interludes. This type of narrative, which intersperses historic with fictional material, can easily become jarring, but in this case the tone of the fictional sections is carefully maintained and fills in gaps left by the letters with believable narrative and incidents.

It is difficult to say whether the story is historically accurate, since so little is known about the main characters, but it certainly appears to be a well-researched book with great respect for the realities of the historic period, social conventions, and styles of the time. Overall this is an engaging novel, with likeable characters, which provides imaginative insight into a pivotal period of American history.