Summary
In the rugged verticality of Eastern Kentucky, the narrative of 'His Divorced Wife' unfolds as a stark exploration of class friction and the fallibility of the American judicial apparatus. Asa Whipple, an unlettered but profoundly noble blacksmith, disrupts the local social order by wedding Nance Haws. Her father, Jethro, a man clinging to the ghosts of his ruined aristocratic past, had envisioned a more 'suitable' match in the person of Rufus Couch, a predatory lawyer. When Sandy Orr, an escaped convict seeking redemption through Asa’s kindness, kills a local agitator for slandering Nance’s unborn child, Asa assumes the culpability to protect his family’s honor. This altruism is met with the cold machinery of Couch’s ambition, who, now serving as District Attorney, incinerates Orr's confession to ensure Asa’s incarceration. The subsequent plot involves a fortuitous prison reunion between Asa and Orr, a desperate race against time, and the devastating discovery that Nance, coerced by economic necessity and the desire for her child’s advancement, has divorced Asa to marry the villainous Couch. The resolution is not found in the courtroom, but on the precipice of a cliff, where a back-stabbing duel and a fatal equestrian accident pave the way for a fragile, hard-won restoration of the marital bond.
Synopsis
In an Eastern Kentucky mountain town, illiterate Asa Whipple, the village blacksmith, marries beautiful Nance Haws over the objections of her father. A former aristocrat who was financially ruined, Jethro Haws wanted Nance to marry lawyer Rufus Couch. After Sandy Orr, an escaped convict employed by the kind-hearted Asa, kills Luke Andrews for implying that Nance's expected child is Couch's, Asa takes the blame. He is convicted by Couch, now district attorney, who destroyed the confession Orr left before running away. In prison Asa meets Orr again and they prove Asa's innocence, but when he returns, Asa finds that Nance has divorced him and is about to marry the now wealthy Couch for the sake of her child's education. Asa decides to leave, but Couch engages him in a duel and shoots him in the back before his own death after his horse throws him down a cliff. Asa and Nance now start their marriage anew.
