American Wife

Very good. Even more memorable if you promise not to read the front jacket of the book before you start reading it. You will be rewarded with a richer reading experience and more unforgettable characters instead of falling back on simple stereotypes--I promise.

Here's the beginning of the publisher's blurb (my apologies for not writing an original one):
"A kind, bookish only child born in the 1940s, Alice learned the virtues of politeness early on from her stolid parents and small Wisconsin hometown. But a tragic accident when she was seventeen shattered her identity and made her understand the fragility of life and the tenuousness of luck. So more than a decade later, when she met boisterous, charismatic Charlie Blackwell, she hardly gave him a second look: She was serious and thoughtful, and he would rather crack a joke than offer a real insight; he was the wealthy son of a bastion family of the Republican party, and she was a school librarian and registered Democrat. Comfortable in her quiet and unassuming life, she felt inured to his charms. And then, much to her surprise, Alice fell for Charlie."