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A Novel
by Leah Stewart
Sarah Price is thirty-five years old. She doesn't feel as though she's getting older, but there are some noticeable changes: a hangover after two beers, the stray gray hair, and, most of all, she's called "Mom" by two small children. Always responsible, Sarah traded her MFA for a steady job, which allows her husband, Nathan, to write fiction. But Sarah is happy and she believes Nathan is too, until a truth is revealed: Nathan's upcoming novel, Infidelity, is based in fact.
Suddenly Sarah's world is turned upside down. Adding to her confusion, Nathan abdicates responsibility for the fate of their relationship and of his novel's publication—a financial lifesaver they have been depending upon—leaving both in Sarah's hands. Reeling from his betrayal, she is plagued by dark questions. How well does she really know Nathan? And, more important, how well does she know herself?
For answers, Sarah looks back to her artistic twenty-something self to try to understand what happened to her dreams. When did it all seem to change? Pushed from her complacent plateau, Sarah begins to act—for the first time not so responsibly—on all the things she has let go of for so long: her blank computer screen; her best friend, Helen; the volumes of Proust on her bookshelf. And then there is that e-mail in her inbox: a note from Rajiv, a beautiful man from her past who once tempted her to stray. The struggle to find which version of herself is the essential one—artist, wife, or mother—takes Sarah hundreds of miles away from her marriage on a surprising journey.
Wise, funny, and sharply drawn, Leah Stewart's Husband and Wife probes our deepest relationships, the promises we make and break, and the consequences they hold for our lives, revealing that it's never too late to step back and start over.
"Stewart's graceful prose and easy storytelling pull the reader into caring about what happens to the struggling heroine while exploring the many gray areas of life and marriage." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Stewart creates a crisis of faith where adult reality collides with youthful dreams. The writing is tactile, elemental, even comical, providing readers with a situation that could so easily be their own." - Library Journal
"Stewart is a perceptive writer with a keen grasp of contemporary culture and domestic life.... " - Booklist
"Hilarious, heartbreaking, and wise, Husband and Wife is a novel to savor. Stewart's bright heroine is faced with an impossible choice—and I couldn't put the book down until I'd followed her story to the end." - Amanda Eyre Ward, author of Love Stories in This Town
"This narrative voice is so alive and specific that it moves past the idea of 'narrative voice' to become a human woman speaking to you.... I cherish this wry, funny, aching, intelligent character and this book!" - Marisa de los Santos, author of Belong to Me and Love Walked In
This information about Husband and Wife was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Leah Stewart is the author of the novels The Myth of You and Me and Body of a Girl. A recipient of a 2010 NEA Literature Fellowship, she has taught at Vanderbilt University; Sewanee, the University of the South; and Murray State University, where she was the Watkins Endowed Professor of Creative Writing. She currently teaches creative writing at the University of Cincinnati and lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, with her husband and their two young children.
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