"The Lost Wife"

Susanna Moore is the author of several novels, including In the Cut, Sleeping Beauties, and The Whiteness of Bones, and four books of nonfiction. She lives in New York City.

Moore applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Lost Wife, and reported the following:

From page 69:

...I did not see it at first, but the Dakota women live in two worlds as well, working with me in the dark house, making blackberry cobbler and polishing mahogany sideboards, then returning to their tipis. I wonder what they think. They will never tell me. And I will never tell them. That is why it is two worlds, not one.

I discovered that the teachers at the school for Indian children feed them out of their own pocket, and I have been giving them food and James's outgrown clothes, shirts and pants too small for most of them, which they cut into strips to make skirts and neckcloths. The missionary Dr. Williston has a log church three miles from here, and some of the Christian Indians attend service there every Sunday. He, too, gives them what he can spare. He has been in the valley for twenty-seven years.

The many newspapers we receive, some of them weeks old, are full of false reports, especially about the War. Only last week we read that General Joe Johnston, commander of the Confederate army, had been beheaded in a battle near Richmond, causing mostly jubilation, only to discover that he was alive, although he has been replaced by Robert E. Lee.

It is my birthday today. I am thirty-three years old, although I say that I am thirty. My husband gave me a pair of otter cuffs and a muff.

My life is a combination of fairy tale and newspaper report.

To my surprise and delight, page 69 is a very good introduction to the main character of the book, Sarah Brinton, and her life in Minnesota in the 1860s --- the page is full of information, which is of course not true of all pages. The inevitable estrangement between the world of the white settlers and that of the Sioux women who work for Sarah, and for whom she has a growing affection and trust. The Civil War, distant but growing in importance, both social and political, as the assumption by the Northerners that the War would be over quickly has proved to be untrue. Sarah's age. Her sense that her life is both fantastical and practical.

Learn more about the book and author at Susanna Moore's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Life of Objects.

--Marshal Zeringue