Pastors' Wives

Title: PASTORS’ WIVES

Author: Lisa Takeuchi Cullen

Publisher: Penguin

April 2013

ISBN: 978-0-452-29882-8

Genre: Women’s fiction

PASTORS’ WIVES follows three women whose husbands serve as pastors at a Southern evangelical megachurch.

Ruthie’s husband was a Wall Street executive when he hears the call. Suddenly, before he’s even accepted into the ministry, Ruthie starts feeling the effect of the fish bowl. She struggles to adjust, especially as she and her husband has differences of religion opinions (She was Catholic, he Protestant), and the Christianese they speak are like different languages.  Now Ruthie no longer feels she even knows her husband.

Candace is the First Lady at the Atlanta megachurch. She is a force of nature who will stop at nothing to protect her church and her husband.  She has a reputation as being obeyed by a mere quirk of her eyebrow and she expects nothing less than perfection from those below her.

Ginger is married to Candance’s son, and she struggles in her role. She’s trying to play the part of a dutiful wife and mother while hiding her calamitous past.  When the three women’s lives collide during a fateful event that threatens the survival of all that is precious to them, each will have to ask “What is the price of loving a man of God?”

PASTORS’ WIVES is a portrayal of life in the fish bowl. As a pastor’s wife, I can relate to the demands put upon a home and family as well as a marriage, when the husband/pastor is on call twenty-four seven.  Not only that, but everyone in the community watches you and how you behave/react when you are out in public.

The characters are very realistically developed, and I could relate to them and their various struggles. Whether a man of God serves in a megachurch or in a small country church with less than fifty members, the struggles a wife faces remain almost the same. If you want an inside look at a pastor’s wife, then you will want to read PASTORS’ WIVES. From the moment the call is received, life changes. $16.00. 368 pages.