Over the span of more than four decades, Joyce Carol Oates has produced an enormous body of work consisting of novels, short stories, criticism, plays, and poetry. Not a year has gone by since the mid-1960’s in which she has not published at least one book. Among her many distinctions, she has received the National Book Award for them, the Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award, and she was recently nominated for the Man Booker International Award. A collection of 14 character-driven short stories, “Dear Husband, like most of Oates’ work, is vigorously dark, and it reminds us why we keep reading her in the first place: because we just can’t turn away” (Elle).