Proverbs, in the King James version, says that the price of a virtuous woman is far above rubies. Calvin Trillin in his eulogy for his wife, “About Alice” would value her far more that.

Trillin first saw Alice at a Manhattan party, and he saw a woman who was marvelously beautiful. Photographs of this blue-eyed blonde show someone who is always smiling and who is perfectly coiffed. Alice was always impeccably and stylishly dressed, even with a slouch hat shrouding her eyes.

Trillin also saw a woman who “seemed to glow,” and it took him two years to persuade Alice to marry him. He was already a permanent writer for The New Yorker, but she was always amazed that one could earn a decent living by writing.

Alice herself taught writing at Columbia University and later in prisons. A mark of her sensibility was that she took as much care in dressing for the prison lessons as she did for a fashionable party. When asked why all of the sartorial care, she replied, “I am dressing up for them.”

Alice was afflicted with lung cancer at the age of 38. She had never smoked, but both of her parents were chronic smokers. She realized that neither would have caused her to suffer so much if they had known of the terrible effects of secondhand smoke.

When Time magazine in 1999 ran an article about a Manhattan “cigarette lounge” and portrayed the establishment as an attractive and even sweet smelling sanctuary, Alice was enraged. In an article in the New York Times she asked the city of New York to ban smoking in public places, because “I want to do for my children what my parents would have done for me had they known what we do today.”

Social responsibility for Alice was not a conscious act. Her prison work, her animosity to smoking, her intolerance to bigotry were not principles she preached. They were simply reactions to the moment. Alice acted correctly not because such actions were fashionable but because such were right. As Proverbs says, Alice “openeth her mouth with wisdom, And in her tongue is the law of kindness.”

Alice also “looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.” She raised two daughters with her husband and took care of him, too. Everything Calvin Trillin wrote went first to her for judgement.

In his work, Alice was a constant character, sometimes for gentle fun and sometimes for moral emphasis. Trillin once said of his wife, “She believes that if your child is in a school play and you do not go to every performance, including the special Thursday matinee for the fourth grade, the county will come and take the child.”

Alice was direct. One time she and Calvin heard a speech given by the Republican governor of New York. It was eloquent and moving, and after he returned to their table Alice said, “That was one of the best speeches I’ve ever heard. Why in the world are you a Republican?”

This love story started the same way. Calvin was reminded occasionally by Alice about their first meeting, “You have never again been as funny as you were that night.” He would reply, “You mean I peaked in December of 1963?” “I’m afraid so.”

In the end it was not the lung cancer that killed her but the treatment. Alice survived 25 years after her initial operation. She was able to see her daughters through high school and college graduation and then marriage. In between weddings, though, Alice was discovered to have a badly scarred heart, damaged from the radiation for her lung cancer.

Still hospitalized just a week before the second daughter’s wedding, Alice got out of the hospital six hours before the ceremony. She did march down the aisle as mother of the bride, ate chocolate cake and went home to her house in Greenwich Village. She said in an email, “Life doesn’t get much better than this.”

Two and a half weeks later Alice died of cardiac arrest. At her funeral one daughter said, “Mom … you were the coolest girl I ever knew.” Proverbs says, may “her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her.”

Calvin Trillin has written a book of praise for this virtuous woman. Even though I have focused on Alice, as he did, it is obvious that their marriage was a true partnership. He is still grieving, but in that grief he has been finally able to share Alice with his readers.

Occasionally it is worthwhile to read a slight book, such as this one, that validates how people should live. Alice was an exemplar to her daughters and husband.

As I told a friend of mine, I know of other virtuous women worthy of the praise of Proverbs — his wife, mine, other women who succor their spouses and children and whose “own works praise her in the gates.”