Their Secret Wife (Shadows Between Lies Book 2)
Page 21
My heartfelt gratitude to Sean-Patrick Lovett, who repeatedly reminded me of my focus along with incorporating some of his words, delivered from the other side of the planet. Grateful thanks to the Beta Reading Team, Caro Webber, Larraine Pita, and Shannon Parsons, who ploughed through the original draft and corrected many of the anomalies. A BIG thanks to Sonja Konings, who spent precious hours line editing every paragraph and challenging my logic and character choices. Sparkling Belinda Gelston deserves a special mention too, for her wonderful lunchtime story, as does Karen Bowller, who relayed an intriguing tale which formed the backbone for this book. Grateful appreciation to Tina Shaw for her comprehensive editorial assessment which provided direction to develop my draft into a fully functioning story.
Authors Carole Brungar, Kirsten McKenzie and Nicholas van Brakel deserve a big thanks too for reading and advising on content changes during the final rework of this story.
About The Author
Nicky Webber
Nicky Webber enjoyed a successful career as a newspaper and magazine journalist. Born in New Zealand, she lived in South Africa for 20 years before returning home in 1994. In recent years she has resumed her passion for writing contemporary and biographical fiction.
Nicky lives in Cambridge, New Zealand, where she writes and updates her progress on https://nickywebber.com/ with excerpts and free chapters of her work. Subscribe to her Newsletter on https://nickywebber.com/contact/
Follow her author page on https://www.facebook.com/NickyWebberandFriends
https://www.facebook.com/nickywebbernz/ or contact her on author@nickywebber.com.
If you enjoyed Their Secret Wife in the Shadows Between Lies series, please consider posting a short review on Amazon or Goodreads
Other Books Written by the Author:
Duplicity
Shadows Between Lies series;
Book 1 When We Believed
Book 2 Their Secret Wife
Book 3 Under Hidden Skies
No Ordinary Man
Push Over
Crow’s Song - Currently in Production
Research References
Basic Definition of Polyandry: It is a single wife “married” to two or more husbands who live in a committed, loving, long term relationship. There are references in history, some of which, are documented below. They formed the back-bone for this story:
Title: A Study of Polyandry, 1963
Author: Prince Peter of Greece & Denmark
Polyandry is … “a very old tradition … lost in time …” undertaken for “economical and sociological reasons.” (pp51)
King Rajabon reported that … “the emperor Vigan Baba and his brother Sri Raja Snga .. had only one wife,” who bore the brothers four sons” (pp134) in Ceylon. In Kerala up to the mid 1700’s polyandry was practised where one woman had up to ten “husbands” but Tipu Sultan wanted polyandry eradicated believing the children were “born of adultery”. There are cases cited where a woman will marry her husband’s brothers (pp174) and this was reasonably common before the influence of the Christian religion.
Ceremonies celebrating polyandrous Buddhist marriages in the town of Leh are well documented, where a bride and her grooms would be consecrated. Much of the historical polyandry took place in Buddhist communities in Western Tibet, (pp303) where the author noted 90 out of 100 families practiced polyandry at the time. (pp344).
“Sometimes the wife will regulate who, of her husbands, should be with her, at other times, of the brothers will do so, … the one who has the greatest influence over them all.” (pp375). The brothers sometimes agreed who would be with their wife for the night … discreetly. It’s the same in monogamy and usually they didn’t specify a time for a “date” for sex (pp375) it just worked as an acceptable natural process, an unspoken arrangement as monogamy tends to operate in contemporary times.
The author noted that “nobody could afford to be jealous,” as it could result in dividing property and destroying family bonds, needed for survival.
The majority of polyandrists operated in India, Sri Lanka, (Ceylon), and Tibet. In Indian mythology (pp 574) there were “unmistakable tales of polyandrous marriages”. The most prominent in history is the Pandara brothers who shared their wife, Draupadi, in common.
Title: The Dynamics of Polyandry, 1988.
Author: Nancy E Levine,
As in contemporary polygamous marriages (one husband with multiple wives), some polyandrous marriages also introduced the concept of “co-wives”.