Vow: A Memoir of Marriage (and Other Affairs)

(Paperback)

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Description

There are so many ways to find out. From a cell phone. From a bank statement. From some weird supermarket encounter. One morning in early January 2005, Wendy Plumps friend came to tell her that her husband was having an affair. It was not a shock. Actually, it explained a lot. But what Wendy was not prepared for was the revelation that her husband also had another child, living within a mile of their family home. Monogamy is one of the most important of the many vows we make in our marriages. Yet it is a rare spouse who does not face some level of temptation in their married life. The discovery of her husbands affair followed betrayals of Wendys own, earlier in the marriage. The revelations of those infidelities had tested their relationship, but for Wendy, it was commitmentthe sticking with itthat mattered most, and when her sons were born, she knew family had to come first. But with another woman and another family in the picture, she lost all sense of certainty. In Vow, Wendy Plump boldly walks one relationships fault lines, exploring infidelity from the perspective of both betrayer and betrayed. Moving fluidly from the intimate to the near-universal, she considers the patterns of adultery, the ebb and flow of passion, the undeniable allure of the illicit, the lovers and the lies. Frank, intelligent and important, Vow will forever alter your understanding of fidelity, and the meaning of the promises we make to those we love.

Reviews

Vow is brilliant from both a literary and a psychological perspective. This book is more that simply honest -- it is also searingly well told. A tremendous achievement. * Elizabeth Gilbert *
Jaw-droppingly frank but ultimately instructive... In addition to being strikingly well-written, what separates Vow from most personal accounts of adultery is Plump's forthrightness about her less-than-chaste record as a wife... [A] gutsy, intelligent examination of vows and the tantalizing allure of the illicit. * NPR.org *
Plump manages in this frank memoir to fully capture her lifeand woman, wife, and motherwho leaves nothing unexamined and has nothing left to lose * Publishers Weekly *

Author Bio

Wendy Plump has been a newspaper and magazine reporter for over twenty years. She has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and New Jersey Monthly Magazine and has won several New Jersey Press Association Awards. She lives in Pennsylvania with her sons.