In a small town, a preacher’s wife faces more scrutiny than almost anyone. Where she goes and what she wears, how she talks and whom she talks to and what she says: everything she does is noticed, noted, weighed, and judged. Charity begins at home, but so does humility, modesty, patience, piety, and respectability, and a preacher’s wife is under pressure to embody them all—even more pressure, sometimes, than the preacher himself.
