The Headmaster’s Wife

Publisher Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin Press, March 1, 2014

An immensely talented writer whose work has been described as “incandescent” (Kirkus Reviews) and “poetic” (Booklist), Thomas Christopher Greene turns in a more literary direction with The Headmaster’s Wife, his most ambitious work to date.

Like his father before him, Arthur Winthrop is the Headmaster of Vermont’s elite Lancaster School. Found wandering naked in Central Park, he begins to tell his story to the police, but his memories collide into one another, and the true nature of things, a narrative of of love, of marriage, of family and of a tragedy Arthur does not know how to address emerges. The Headmaster’s Wife explores the nature of family, of the hidden world of boarding schools, and how a love can both deepen and change over time as Greene explores the way that tragedy and time assail one man’s memories of his life and loves. Beautifully written and profoundly emotional, it stands as a moving elegy to the power of love as an antidote to grief.

“A truly remarkable novel, I read the second half of The Headmaster’s Wife with my mouth open, my jaw having dropped at the end of the first half. Thomas Christopher Greene knows how to hook a reader and land him.”
— Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Empire Falls

“An accomplished and artful storyteller, Greene has surprises in store as he unspools a plot that becomes as poignant as it is unpredictable.”
— Wally Lamb, New York Times bestselling author of The Hour I First Believed

“I devoured this book. Both psychologically complex and wickedly fast-paced.”
— Julianna Baggott, New York Times bestselling author of Pure