About this item
A luminous and insightful novel that considers the moral complexities of scientific discovery and the sustaining nature of love. A young researcher at MIT, Jane Weiss is obsessed with finding the genetic marker for Valentine's Disease, a neurodegenerative disorder. Her pursuit is deeply personal - Valentine's killed her mother, and she and her freewheeling sister, Laurel, could be genetic carriers; each has a fifty percent chance of developing the disease. Having seen firsthand the devastating effect Valentine's had on her parents' marriage, Jane is terrified she might become a burden on whomever she falls in love with and so steers clear of romantic entanglement. Then, the summer before her father's second wedding, Jane falls hard for her future stepbrother, Willie.
About the Author
Eileen Pollack is the author of the novels A Perfect Life, Breaking and Entering (a New York Times Editor's Choice selection) and Paradise, New York, as well as two collections of short fiction, The Rabbi in the Attic and In the Mouth. Her award-winning book of nonfiction Woman Walking Ahead: In Search of Catherine Weldon and Sitting Bull, was recently made into a major motion picture starring Jessica Chastain. An excerpt from her investigative memoir, The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science Is Still a Boys' Club, was published in The New York Times Magazine and went viral. Her work has appeared in Best American Essays and Best American Short Stories, among many other journals and anthologies. She is a professor on the faculty of the Helen Zell MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Michigan. She divides her time between Manhattan and Ann Arbor, Michigan.Photo credit Michele McDonald.
