<DIV><p><I>“The memory starts here, in my apron pocket, with the gun.”</I><BR>  <BR> So begins <B>The Doctor's Wife</B>, a stunning debut novel about four people and the cataclysmic intersection of their lives.  Michael is a rising OB/GYN at a prominent private practice in Albany, New York; he also moonlights at a local women's health clinic.  But Annie, his wife, has become tired of her workaholic husband's absences, and the soccer-mom lifestyle has worn thin. She begins a passionate love affair with bad-boy, fading celebrity painter Simon Haas—an affair that quickly goes awry when Simon's wife Lydia, who is also the model upon whom he built his career, discovers the truth.  </p> <p>Abortion, local evangelism, marital disenchantment, and the rifts of social class:  Brundage takes on the fault lines of our era with a deft hand.   </p> </div>