There was no separating them.” But at fifty years old, Pru is forced to see herself as separate, and the thrust of the narrative follows her growth and the redefinition of her marriage and herself. In the early years of their marriage, Pru feels that “Spence’s success was her success, too. His dementia appears slowly with his inability to work on, let alone finish, a book he has contracted to write and continues quickly to the point where Pru has to hire a caregiver to help out while she is at work as a development officer at Barnard. He stumbles, in language, in memory, and, eventually, in movement. After a Guggenheim and a Mellon, he wins a MacArthur, but at the age of fifty-seven, things begin to go awry. Crisply and at breakneck speed in a brief first section, we learn that Pru Steiner has always had a weakness for older men, so it’s no surprise when she falls for Spence Robin, her charismatic but only slightly older Shakespeare professor at Columbia.Īfter that the novel takes on more texture and depth as it develops the story of a marriage and an oddly blended family. 304 pages.ĪT FIRST IT APPEARS that Morningside Heights is yet another campus tale of the professor-meets-grad-student variety, but Joshua Henkin’s new novel quickly sidesteps formula. It's about the love between women and men and children and parents, about the things we give up in the face of adversity, about what endures when life turns out differently from what we thought we signed up for.New York. Morningside Heights is a sweeping and compassionate novel about a marriage surviving hardship. Arlo, a wealthy entrepreneur who invests in biotech, may be his father's last, best hope. Meanwhile, Spence's estranged son from his first marriage has come back into their lives.

One day, feeling particularly isolated, Pru meets a man, and the possibility of new romance blooms. With their daughter Sarah away at medical school, Pru must struggle on her own. The Great Man can't concentrate he falls asleep reading The New York Review of Books. Thirty years later, something is wrong with Spence. But when she falls in love with Spence Robin, her hotshot young Shakespeare professor, her life takes a turn she couldn't have anticipated. Neuware - A tender, powerful, and big-hearted novel about love in the face of loss, from the award-winning author of The World Without You and Matrimony When Ohio-born Pru Steiner arrives in New York in 1976 after graduating from Yale, she follows in a long tradition of young people determined to take the city by storm.

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