The Covered Wife

I think I have been here like this – still, but awake; quiet, but wound tight as a spring shoved into a box – since I lay down, not long after dark. But I must have slept, slept then woken, shifted from blessed nothingness to tortured waiting.

Sarah is a smart, young lawyer working endless hours when she falls head over heels for Daniel – handsome, passionate and part of the kind of large, chaotically loving family Sarah longed for as the only child of a single mother.

When Daniel introduces her to a charismatic young couple, Rabbi Menachem Lev and his wife, Chani, despite herself, Sarah is drawn in by their progressive beachside synagogue and the song, feasting and friendship that come with it. By the time she and Daniel move to the Jamison Valley with the other believers, Sarah can't imagine life without the joy, meaning and love they've discovered.

Four years on, youthful fervour has given way to something darker. As the community celebrates the wedding of a beautiful young convert and a much older divorcee, a series of terrifying truths emerges that tear Sarah's world apart, and cause her to question everything – her faith, her marriage and her future.

Born in New Zealand, Lisa Emanuel studied law and political science in Wellington, Jerusalem and Sydney. Before becoming a writer, she worked as a political staffer, a judge’s associate, a competition lawyer and in marketing and communications. She has studied at the Faber Writing Academy in Sydney, completed a mentorship with acclaimed novelist Kathryn Heyman, and was awarded Highly Commended in the ASA Mentorship Prize for an early draft of this manuscript. Lisa’s first novel, The Covered Wife, was shortlisted for the KYD 2019 Unpublished Manuscript Award, and will be published by Pantera Press in 2021.

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