The Dowry

The painter Jonathan Reizel falls in love with Roberta (Robbie) Gilmore, wife of the art critic Laurentz Gilmore. They run away together—but Gilmore hurls a curse on them: “Your loins will wither away and your seed will bring forth monsters.” Jonathan, terrified that this curse will be fulfilled, is relieved that the child Robbie bears, a little girl named Mollyrob, seems normal. But has the curse been fulfilled after all? The Dowry, written by an otherwise unknown New York actress, Maggy Gould, is a powerful novel of both supernatural and psychological horror, as Laurentz’s enmity toward…