This portrait of a marriage across the decades is “an astonishing work of emotional wisdom” (The New York Times).

Beatrice and Henry—the parents of the protagonist of Dale Peck’s debut novel, Martin and John—are first drawn together when the teenage Henry is battling a brain tumor he believes will soon claim his life. But forty years later they’re still a couple, in a story that moves from Long Island to the Finger Lakes of upstate New York, and from love to hate and back again.

Peck bisects the story of Henry and Beatrice’s marriage with a stunning fifty-page memoir about his own father, mother, and three stepmothers—which combines with the primary narrative to build an unforgettable and deeply moving book about the ways that family both creates and destroys us.