Wednesday, August 20, 2008 9:34 PM CDT
BOOK REVIEW: 'Mrs. Kimble' By Jennifer Haigh
Review by Juanita Sherwood
At the age of 32, while on the staff at a Christian college for women, Ken Kimble gets one of his students pregnant. Needless to say, he is fired from his job. He does marry the young, 18-year-old student — after all, it is 1969 — but they must live with his parents as he has no job.
His father is a minister who has suffered a stroke, which opens up a job opportunity for Ken. He loses this job when it is rumored that one of his counseling sessions was not quite properly conducted. The family, which has added a second child by then, moves several states away, where Mr. Kimble has yet another job working at a college.
He falls for another student, and the two of them leave his wife and children behind. The wife, Vivian, or Birdie as she is more commonly known, has no way to support the children and no skills to do so, either. She is all alone and desperate….
Mr. Kimble and his student “love” eventually end up in Florida, where her wealthy parents live. The parents do not like him, but he hopes they will come around eventually.
One of the neighbors is nearer his age. She is single and living in her wealthy, deceased father’s home that she is trying to sell. Being an independent woman who is well respected in the newspaper business, the neighbor, Joan, has always put her career first.
She has told no one that she has recently had a mastectomy; her mother died from breast cancer, and she fears the same for herself. One thing leads to another, and Mr. Kimble drops his young fiancée.
He begins to court Joan. She is vulnerable, and falls for him. They marry, but under false pretenses. Her brother is a bit concerned, but is not in any position to stop the marriage. Eventually, she does succumb to the cancer.
We next see Mr. Kimble in Washington, D.C., as a wealthy widower. He has used the money from his second wife’s estate to finance real estate deals.
A young woman who had baby-sat for his children when he was married to wife No. 1 becomes his third wife. They have become re-acquainted through a quirk of fate. She has a poor self-image due to a birthmark on the side of her face, but he knows of a doctor who can repair it. That occurs. They are married for 15 years and have a child of their own who is a young teen in that portion of the book.
Kimble comes across as a self-centered “jerk” rampaging through life as he wishes, not caring who he hurts. Those he has contact with, however, have issues of their own, most of which he doesn’t know about.
His first wife, for instance, had a true love that she was not allowed even to consider as a candidate for marriage. Why? That is a typical situation of the late ’60s.
Later, Joan’s desire for children near the age of 40 and his attempt to placate her is also an incident that illustrates his selfishness. Dinah, the third wife, has issues of her own after 15 years of marriage.
At the beginning of the book, there is a short scene that seems unrelated to the rest of the story but will make sense when you read the last paragraph of the book. This is a good story in which everything falls into place for nearly everyone — except the jerk. Good….
Sherwood of Charleston is a retired reading teacher.
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