Title: The Shadow Wife
Description: In THE SHADOW WIFE by Gayle Ridinger, Sophie and Monique are identical twins growing up in 1950’s America. Sophie relishes their identicalness, unlike Monique, who sees her twin as a hindrance to her independence—until the day, that, is, when she makes the discovery that the game of swapping identities with Sophie grants her immense power over others.
The sisters become estranged over time. Sophie meets and ultimately marries Matt, an eccentric and charismatic rich man who is convinced that silence, or things left unsaid, is infinitely more profound than words.
Unexpectedly one day Sophie contacts Monique to plead with her twin for help in escaping from what has become an oppressive marriage. Matt has become utterly disillusioned with her and has now learned to turn his once seemingly “sacred” silence into a cruel weapon. Trapped in the marriage because of Matt’s threats of violence if she leaves him, Sophie needs to find some other way to save herself and her young daughter.
Driven primarily by the intoxicated control she once felt whenever they traded places as children, Monique devises a plan to help Sophie. And so the two sisters prepare to become each other one last time. Monique, however, has no real handle on either who Matt really is or where his conflicting inner torment comes from. More importantly, Monique has no way to know, but is about to discover, where his anguish will take not only him—but soon herself as well.
Though there is a full-scale victory (and well as a tragedy) in the end, it is not the one hoped for or planned. THE SHADOW WIFE is a meditation on sisterhood and marriage, identity and duality.
Subjects: sisterhood, complicity, betrayal, husbands who bully, domestic violence, Fiction, family life, general, Twins, fiction, Marriage, fiction, Man-woman relationships, fiction
Places: Gettysburg, southern New Jersey, Paris
Time periods: America 1950s to today