Be careful what you hear

Gretchen Berg is much too young to remember the 1950s, yet she captures middle America of that era with great skill in The Operator (2020). She also nicely describes Wooster, Ohio, a town I know well and where I have spent a lot of time over the years.

Berg's story begins just a few days before Christmas in 1952 when Vivian, a telephone operator in Wooster who sometimes listens to other people's conversations, overhears gossip that turns over her world.  Betty Miller, daughter of Wooster's mayor and a woman who prides herself as being the most prominent and most fashionable woman in town, learns in a call that Edward Dalton, Vivian's husband, has another wife in another state.

Rather than just confronting Edward, Vivian stews and plots and snoops. She even hires a private investigator to track down the other woman in New York State, then tracks her down herself. When she and Edward remarry in a civil ceremony just to make sure they are legally married, you may think the story should be over, but it is just beginning. There are more revelations and more surprises to come.

Strangely Edward turns out to be the most sympathetic character in the novel, with the possible exception of their teenage daughter Charlotte. But then he is the only key character into whose mind Berg does not take us. He is portrayed just as a hapless man trying to swim through his troubles while making minimum waves. It's the women, especially Vivian and Betty, who are shown as petty, spiteful  and vain.

Berg's novel, which includes a bank embezzlement subplot, is loosely based on a true story.

All readers will find this novel fascinating. Those of us old enough to remember the time of telephone operators and party lines will find it sobering.