The doctor's wife
(Book)

Originally published: New York : Viking, 2004.

"First Plume printing, December 2005"--Title page verso.

Lydia Haas is devoted to Jesus, her church, and her husband. Only recently, after it's too late, has she understood how much she has sacrificed to all of them. Michael Knowles is a rising young doctor, an OB/GYN at a prominent hospital. A man committed to his principles, to rescues with uncertain outcomes; to his wife. The life they've made. He never intended to have to make a choice. Annie Knowles is the "doctor's wife." The first time she walked into their 1812 Federal-style home in High Meadow, an idyllic town in upstate New York, she thought she'd be happy there forever. But that dream wore thin, and another man-a colleague at the local college where Annie teaches-is insinuating himself slowly, surely, passionately into her life. Simon Haas' paintings of his wife Lydia made him famous. The story behind those paintings, and behind his marriage, is not one Simon chooses to tell. Until he meets Annie Knowles. -- from Amazon.

"From the outside, the Knowles family appeared to have it all - a loving marriage, two beautiful children, a home in an idyllic part of the countryside in upstate New York. Michael is a rising OB/GYN at a prominent private practice, his wife, Annie, teaches at a local college. But Annie's role as 'the doctor's wife' has worn thin, and Michael has answered the call of an old flame to moonlight at the local women's health center, the city's only provider of abortions. These subtle cracks in their life widen when anonymous threats arrive at their home. The reason for this intimidation is not at all clear: is it, as seems to be the case, the work of religious extremists opposed to what Michael is doing? Or are these violent warnings meant for Annie? For she has made at least one certain enemy in town - Lydia Haas, the painter's wife, a disturbed young woman with a cellar full of her own dark secrets. Told in the alternating viewpoints of Michael, Annie, Simon, and Lydia ..."--Publisher's description.