Thy Brother's Wife can be seen as an historical novel in the tradition established by Sir Walter Scott. Even though the era is only two decades earlier than the publication date, the nostalgia for a lost period of hope and renovation is highly romantic. The book is ambiguous about its relation to history. On the one hand, fictitious characters interact with real people and events; on the other hand, a "Disclaimer" precedes the narrative in order to establish that it is not a roman a clef. The author's "Personal Afterword" claims for the novel a place in the tradition of religious parables. The texture of the book is a mixture of historical reality, myth, archetype, romance, and allegory and perhaps best lends itself to being read as the same blend of fact, legend and lore as Greeley's first novel, The Magic Cup (1979).