About the Book

BOOKSENSE PICK Summer 2006

New York City, 1884

“Love is an elastic concept that stretches from heaven to hell nd combines in itself good and evil, high and low.”

--Carl Gustave Jung

“Survival of the fittest does not always mean survival of the best … it means only survival of that which is best suited to the circumstances, good or bad, in which it is placed—the survival of a savage in a savage social medium, of a rogue among rogues, of a parasite where a parasite alone can live.

--Henry Maudsley

With Susannah Morrow, Megan Chance proved herself a writer of extraordinary talent, one whose evocative prose brilliantly conjured up the past. Now she has written an unforgettable novel that illuminates the cruel injustices of an age when a woman was forced to be docile and obedient, to deny her passions, to forgo her dreams.

“You’re too sensitive, Lucy. You need to know your place. Be a wife to your husband. Find your duty. Happiness will follow.”

For young Mrs. Lucy Carelton, it’s becoming harder and harder to be the perfect wife, to feign pleasure at the elegant soirees and glittering balls, the elaborate gowns and endless gossip. While other women revel in the rigors of the Season, she feels overwrought and increasingly suffocated… until her only escape is the blessed darkness laudanum brings.

Her husband, William, is deeply concerned. He has taken his beautiful, fragile wife to doctor after doctor, hoping to find someone who can cure her of her headaches and fits of hysteria, with no success. But now a brilliant and controversial new healer has arrived in New York City. Victor Seth is a doctor of neurology. He is also a hypnotist, maybe a charlatan.

At first, Lucy is reluctant to see him. There is something about the way he looks at her, something improper and slightly dangerous in his gaze that makes her afraid of him, afraid of the secrets he might uncover. And yet, Victor Seth holds out the promise of salvation. Or does he? For the compelling doctor has his own agenda. In the fascinating Mrs. Carleton, he perceives an opportunity he cannot resist, and soon his actions will set off a chain of events that will have shocking repercussions no one can foresee, Lucy least of all.

Heartrending and suspenseful, disturbing and darkly erotic, An Inconvenient Wife is a masterful blending of historical detail and flawless storytelling that shows how a woman can be driven to the edge of sanity, driven even to the ultimate betrayal.