It is not easy to find a contempo rary novel that isn't depressing

or convoluted or about people whom we cannot possibly like. The Good Wife is the exception. A plot summary may sound depressing, but Stewart O'Nan has written an absorbing story about good people who do the best they can in the midst of almost overwhelming circumstances.

The good wife is Patty Dickerson, pregnant with her first child and very much in love with her husband Tommy. They are "ordinary" people, hard-working, rather innocent. Unfortunately, Tommy is led into trouble by his friend Gary, and they commit murder in a home they have come to rob.

The reader is not very sympathetic with Tommy; he seems weak and easily influenced. It is Patty that we care about. Not highly educated, she has no career to fall back on when Tommy goes to jail. She has a son to rear; she has to move in with her mother (who never approved of Tommy); she's lonely.

The Good Wife is a love story. There are no villains (except for Gary who betrays Tommy and "gets off" almost free), just nice people trying to make a living and help each other. Don't think, though, that this is a boring book. It is quiet, but it is moving. It's about commitment and faith in spite of poverty, temptation, and mounting despair.

As the court appeals fail, Tommy tells Patty to divorce him and get on with her life. "Who's going to come visit you? You've got a family," she says, as a small secret part of her agrees with him.

"Patty takes maybe the most boring job of her life, cashiering at a big discount liquor store. It's steady, and she only has to work nights once a week, but it's depressing, between the older regulars cashing their pension checks and the college kids stocking up for the weekends. Patty remembers how she and Tommy used to party, all the risks they used to take."

Their son Casey does not like the trips to see his father, and they never grow close, in spite of Patty's efforts. Casey is a good student but he is very reserved, and Patty worries about him. She seeks Tommy's advice, but his long-distance consultations are not much help. At times she cannot even take him to a doctor when he's sick because there is no money.

Stewart O'Nan has written nine novels. He is a skillful writer, with an understated style in this one that matches the story he is telling. The drama is in the characterization, and the suspense arises as we struggle with Patty to make ends meet, and to endure the long years without Tommy.

The Good Wife is available at the Mary Willis Library.