Author: G.G. Revelle
Publisher:  Beacon B330
Year: 1960Print: 1 Cover Price: $.35
Condition: Very Good Plus. Light wear. 
Genre:  Fiction/Adult
Pages: 154
70123085E

“How should he handle his alcoholic wife,” asks the lurid cover of the 1960 novel Alcoholic Wife by G.G. Revelle. “Beat her? Cater to her inflamed desires? Overlook her drunken intimacies with other men? Desert her for his seductive mistress?” With a retail price of 35 cents, the volume helpfully included a list of other Beacon Book titles that readers might enjoy, such as Footloose Fraulein and Trailer Tramp. Yet Alcoholic Wife was not just entertainment, but an examination of a growing social crisis, as the back cover promised: “This novel courageously tackles the problem of the drinking wife—today more common than ever before!”

Mark and Fay Daniels live with their young daughter Susan in a split-level home near the chemical plant where Mark works. Mark serves as the first-person narrator of the story, explaining that he met Fay while stationed in Great Britain during World War II and married after a whirlwind courtship. Now, Mark debates whether to run for union president at the plant, while Fay spends extravagantly on clothes and furniture as part of her social climbing strategy, drinks heavily, and neglects the housework and their daughter. Eager for the salary supplement that comes with the union position, Fay promises to stop drinking if Mark will stand for election. Meanwhile, Mark has an affair with Marsha, an attractive secretary at the plant, who has admired him from afar since his days as a high school football hero.