It’s in the denouement of A Well-Trained Wife where Levings fully, and elegantly, reckons with what trying to live life as a perfect "Proverbs 31 woman"... has cost her ... The reader’s heart breaks along with Levings’s when she realizes the deal she agreed to so early in life — secluding herself to worship God, raise a family and avoid the supposed wickedness of the secular world — was based on a lie.
The author pulls no punches in recounting nearly 15 years of oppression and abuse, painting a visceral portrait of her then-monochromatic world with bold strokes of linguistic color and sensory detail ... A devastatingly triumphant story.