Meagan Church Revisits 1950's Suburbia in NYT Bestseller 'The Mad Wife'

In The Mad Wife, New York Times bestselling author Meagan Church takes readers back to 1950’s suburban America where we meet Lulu Mayfield, a young, married woman who is trying to keep up appearances by being the perfect mother and the ideal housewife. As the story unfolds, Lulu’s life begins spiraling following the birth of her second child, and even more so when she becomes consumed by her mysterious new neighbor, Bitsy, who seems impeccable and too good to be true. According to Church, “…that new neighbor seems a little too perfect, a little too happy because she always has a smile on her face and Lulu doesn’t trust it. She does not believe that smile and she believes that a darker truth lurks beneath it and so she begins digging to try to uncover what those secrets are, but the more she digs the more she comes face to face with a reality that is almost too much for her to bear.”

Regarding the trad (traditional) wife lifestyle that has been widely promoted on social media platforms, Church believes that the history and reality of the lives of housewives from the 1950’s has not been fully explored by those who are glorifying this trend. As Church explains, “…when we take off the rose-colored glasses that we like to look back on history with and we really take a close look at what actually happened, sometimes what we find shocks us because I think we want to reminisce… but we’re not really exploring all the nuance that there was… and so when I see these trad wife movements and social media posts and stuff, I’m like, that is an alternative reality. It has definitely not been what most generations of women have experienced within the history of humanity so to idealize this… let’s really take a close examination of what that looked like for those who were housewives and really what their reality was.”