The Headmaster's Wife

Description

Arthur Winthrop is a middle-aged headmaster at an elite prep school in Vermont. When he is arrested for an act that is incredibly out of character, the strait-laced, married headmaster confesses to a much more serious crime. Arthur reveals that he has had a passionate affair with a scholarship student called Betsy Pappas. But Betsy is a fickle and precocious teenager. When she switches her attentions to a classmate, Arthur's passion for Betsy turns, by degrees, into something far darker. Now Arthur must tell the truth about what happened to Betsy. But can Arthur's version of events be trusted - or is the reality much more complex and unnerving? The Headmaster's Wife is a dark, sinuous and compelling novel about marriage and obsessive love.

Thomas Christopher Greene was born and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts. Tom has worked in a staple factory; as an oyster shucker; as a speechwriter and spokesperson for a presidential campaign; as the director of public affairs for two colleges; and as a professor of writing and literature. In 2006, Tom founded the Vermont College of Fine Arts, a top New England arts college, making him the youngest college president in America at that time.

A truly remarkable novel. I read the second half of The Headmaster's Wife with my mouth open, my jaw having dropped at the end of the first. Thomas Christopher Greene knows how to hook a reader and land him -- Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of EMPIRE FALLS I devoured this book. Both psychologically complex and wickedly fast paced -- Julianna Baggott, bestselling author of PURE Greene's haunting tale tracks the unraveling of a marriage. It starts, eerily, with a naked man's arrest... then twists back in time through love, grief, betrayal, and love again * Good Housekeeping US * Nothing is what it appears in this brilliant story of a life gone awry... The author's true intentions make this tale even more remarkable, for the book is, at its core, a trenchant examination of one family's terrible loss and how the aftermath of tragedy can make or break a person's soul * Publishers Weekly * An accomplished and artful storyteller, Greene has surprises in store as he unspools a plot that becomes as poignant as it is unpredictable -- Wally Lamb, New York Times bestselling author of THE HOUR I FIRST BELIEVED Incredibly beautiful and compulsively readable, The Headmaster's Wife will keep you mesmerized into the wee hours. A master storyteller, Greene's biggest achievement is proving that the most complex mystery of all is how and why we love -- Kimberly McCreight, bestselling author of RECONSTRUCTING AMELIA