Once you read The Pilot’s Wife by Anita Shreve you are sure to feel the same as I do. In the early morning hours of 3:24 a.m. Kathryn is awakened only to be told that her husband’s plane has crashed off the coast of Malin Head, Ireland. Now Kathryn is left to tell her only daughter and deal with the investigation and all the new facts she is soon to find out about her husband.

Kathryn, a mother, wife, and school teacher, is married to Jack who is a pilot. They have a fifteen year old daughter, Mattie, and the three of them live in what used to be a nuns convent along the beach in Fortune’s Rock, New Hampshire. Kathryn’s grandmother, Julia, lives about twenty minutes away and cares for Mattie during much of this story. Kathryn and Jack seemed to have had a normal life that consisted of love and care for more than ten years. Throughout those years, though, they grew apart and as Kathryn finds, they grew more apart than she thought.

When Kathryn answered the early morning knock at the door, Robert, a man from the airport, told her the news of her husband and helped her deal with the tragedy for the next few months. Robert protected her from all the investigators and news journalists trying to find bits and pieces of new information to add to the developing story. During part of the investigation Kathryn was questioned if she had told any of Jack’s family. However, Jack no longer had any family living and Kathryn responded by saying, “His mother is dead.” To her surprise though, Jack lied to her and his mother was still living at a nursing home in Minnesota.

[edited for plot spoilers]


I was amazed to see how clear and precise the narrator was about the setting. I was even able to picture all the minute details in your head. Also, after the clues started piling up I was raging with fury .... This exciting suspenseful, tragedy was an excellent book to read even though I encountered feelings of anger often times. Now I understand why The Pilot’s Wife has been on Oprah’s Book Club list since March 1999, because it is easy for any woman that has ever been in a relationship to relate to. To find out what happened in London and what Jack had lied about, you must read The Pilot’s Wife by Anita Shreve!