From the acclaimed author of The Feast of Love— a National Book Award nominee— comes a light-hearted and deeply moving novel about events and emotions that shape the lives of a young married couple.

Five Oaks, Michigan is not exactly where Saul and Patsy meant to end up. Both from the East Coast, they met in college, fell in love, and settled down to married life in the Midwest. Saul is Jewish and a compulsively inventive worrier; Patsy is gentile and cheerfully pragmatic. In the two years since they were married, nothing has mattered so much to either Saul or Patsy as the fact that they are just that: Saul-and-Patsy. Their life together is an idyll of domestic romance— at least for a while. With the birth of their daughter, Saul is shocked to find himself feeling envious of the attention Patsy lavishes on her. At the same time, Saul' s attention is being drawn away from home by one of his high school students, a deeply troubled sixteen-year-old boy who will lead Saul to question everything he has always assumed about himself and about Saul-and-Patsy.