'In Tim Winton’s novel The Riders, Scully arrives at the airport to pick up his wife and daughter but only young Billie is there. This palpable sense of disquiet is also in Christian White’s new novel, The Wife and the Widow, when Kate and daughter Mia wait at the airport for husband and father John, who is a no-show. Yet this time it is more unsettling, the gash deeper.' (Introduction)