Review: "A Well-Trained Wife" by Tia Levings

A Well-Trained Wife by Tia Levings
Published August 2024 via St. Martin's Press
★★★★

Levings was still a child when the dominoes began to fall: her family moved from Michigan down south, joined a stricter church, uprooted her expectations of who she should be and what she should want—what she was allowed to want—in life. And so she ended up in a marriage that was abusive from the word go, one in which the only route to a better future she could see was one in which she made herself ever smaller, ever more submissive.

All along, I thought I was protecting the kids. Shielding them from realities behind closed doors. Sacrificing to maintain a two-parent Christian home. Making hard, better choices for their faith, family, and education than I made for myself, trying to safeguard them from pain.

But they saw. That was obvious now. And staying meant raising sons who hit women. Staying meant raising a daughter who stayed with the man who hit her. (loc. 25*)

This was one of my most anticipated books for 2024, and it does not disappoint. Levings was in the Amazon docuseries Shiny Happy People, but her writing has been on my radar for even longer. This is not her processing her childhood and marriage—she's done enough of that that the result here is a clear-eyed, clear-voiced look at not just her toxic marriage but the forces behind it.

Without my parents' help, my next option was church. First Baptist had a reputation of sending the cream of the crop to Liberty, and as a friend of Jerry Falwell, Dr. Vines was well-connected. I scheduled an appointment, confident he'd be proud of my hunger to study the Bible. [...]

I muttered about WOLBI and a partial scholarship, stammering without any of the confidence I'd tried with Dad.

"Well, young lady, we use our precious dollars to assist men called into the ministry. We don't spare that money for girls."

I threw up when I got home. Boys got what they wanted. Girls gave it up for God. (loc. 615)

It's hard for me to sum up just how terrible Leving's marriage ended up being, not least because it's hard to unpick how much of it was the abuse itself and how much of it was the religious culture around them encouraging Levings to take the abuse, take all the blame for everything, submit submit submit and maybe, just maybe, her marriage would get better. (And if it didn't, it would be her fault.)

He wanted me to call him "My lord."

Wear only dresses.

Cover my head with a scarf to show submission and modesty.

And he wanted me to stop showing anyone what I'd written or made, such as a forum post or a scrapbook, unless I'd shown it to him first. (loc. 2011)

It's a lot of story, and quite grim in places—even knowing how things turned out I found the reading stressful at times. That's a good thing, believe it or not (sign of a well-done book), but it's definitely one to pick up with intention. Very glad that Levings is now not just writing her own story but writing her own path forward.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.