The Heart of Winter by Jonathan Evison

THE HEART OF WINTER by Jonathan Evison (Lawn Boy and This is Your Life, Harriet Chance)is an absolutely gorgeous novel about roughly seventy years of marriage between Abe (an insurance salesman) and Ruth (wishes to be a poet) Winter. Using flashbacks from the present day, Evison writes movingly about their relationship, including meeting as undergraduates at University of Washington, moving to Bainbridge Island, raising four children, and facing a serious health crisis. Throughout, he eloquently illustrates life changes such as when he comments on having adult children: “The audacity. The presumption. The indignity. It seemed a cruel arrangement that one's children, the very nurslings who once drooled on your shirt collar and threw up on your lapel, who wet the bed and … depended upon you for every little comfort, nay, for their very survival, one day grew into sanctimonious, domineering, irredeemable despots, hell bent on infantilizing you as though it were the natural order.” THE HEART OF WINTER squarely addresses mortality (“Tomorrow: the day we all took for granted as we plotted and planned our futures.”) and marriage (“… a marriage requires maintaining, and amending, for it is more than a binding commitment, it is a process, one that demands participation, a willingness to absorb, to accept, to reassess”). This novel, based in part on Evison’s mother’s response to health challenges, would be an excellent selection for book groups, especially as it portrays societal expectations and the roles of men and women in the second half of the twentieth century. THE HEART OF WINTER received a starred review from Booklist (“One of our very best writers, Evison expertly details the hopes and dreams, sacrifices and tragedies of family life.”). Highly recommended.