Mrs. Kimble : A Novel by Jennifer Haigh
Love is blind, at least at first.  Just ask the three Mrs. Kimbles.  At the start, Ken Kimble seemed to be the man of their dreams – charming, attentive and handsome.  They fell in love and married quickly.  But as reality eventually settled in, the three Mrs. Kimbles found themselves involved with a stranger without a conscience.   

The first Mrs. Kimble was a naïve college girl who fell in love with Ken Kimble, the then chaplain and choir director of her Baptist school.  She was the envy of all the other girls who were secretly in love with him.  He got her pregnant and himself fired.  Then after almost 8 years of marriage, he left her with two small children and ran off with another young student. 

The second Mrs. Kimble was a 39 year old heiress recuperating emotionally from a mastectomy and battle with breast cancer.  She hadn’t been with a man in over a year.  After meeting Ken Kimble, then engaged to her friend’s young daughter and temporarily working for a lawn service, she befriends him and decides not to return to her fast-paced journalist life in New York City.  He neglects to tell her about his children until she finds out about them on her own. 

The third Mrs. Kimble used to baby-sit his children.  He ran into her again, quite literally, years later in Washington, D.C.  As he helps nurse her broken ankle back to health, he convinces her to have a large birthmark removed from her face.  She is now transformed into a beautiful woman, and she marries him, despite his being twice her age, and bears him another son.   

Through the first two Mrs. Kimbles we learn how utterly selfish and icy cold Ken Kimble can be.  He seamlessly trades in one life for another without any regard for whom he hurts and leaves behind.  Once settled into a relationship, it is all about him and what he wants.  Through the third Mrs. Kimble, we truly begin to understand what an opportunist and elitist Ken Kimble is and his remarkable ability not to consider the consequences of his past as his responsibility.  Also woven throughout the book is the story of Ken’s first son, Charlie, who has been emotionally scarred by his father’s desertion and is now terrified of marriage and commitment.   

Ken Kimble is easy to hate, and you will feel for these three women who were so vulnerable.  But, happily, two of the three Mrs. Kimbles move on and find the right men for them, so the story is not tragic.  In fact, the ending is quite satisfying.  Mrs. Kimble is a great debut novel from a promising new author. 

About the author:  Jennifer Haigh grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania.  She is a graduate of Dickinson College and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was awarded a 2002 James A. Michener Fellowship.  Her short stories have been published in Good Housekeeping, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Idaho Review, Global City Review, and elsewhere.  She lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

  Mrs. Kimble : A Novel by Jennifer Haigh