Joshua Henkin

"When Pru Steiner met and married Spence Robin--her dazzling young hotshot English professor at Columbia--she thought she knew what she was signing up for. But thirty years later, when Spence develops early-onset Alzheimer's, the peaceful (if ambivalent) life Pru has built for herself begins to crumble. Spence is no longer the Great Man she fell in love with, and as his needs become more pronounced, Pru finds herself short on money, overwhelmed by...

An adopted Jew discovers his birth mother was a Christian. Ben Suskind, 31, of New York always believed he was Jewish, so the letter from his birth mother throws his life in confusion. But he recovers, decides he is a Jew after all and for the first time attends a synagogue. A first novel.