Obviously there was intentional irony in the author's choice of a title for [Sweetsir], for Morgan Beauchamp Sweetsir is anything but the gentleman his name implies. Instead, he is a heavy drinking, tattooed, macho-type with a penchant for kinky sex. His fatal stabbing by his wife in the very first chapter becomes more and more justifiable as the novel flashes back to bring the reader up to the killing and beyond to the trial of Sally Sweetsir….

The novel is not just another oh-so-typical condemnation of wife abuse. It questions the peculiar mentality of those women whose stubborn devotion to romantic fantasies makes them vulnerable to such abuse. In spite of her lawyer's attempts to link her to every woman with a hint of a there-but-for-the-grace-of-God theory, Sally Sweetsir is hardly the heroine with whom any woman would or should identify.

Long before their marriage, Sally has been...