NEW RELEASE
Husband and Wife - Leah Stewart (2010)
Sarah Price is at a crossroads. Her husband, writer Nathan Bennett, has just confessed to having had an affair, which she is sure he has chronicled in his latest book, Infidelity. In a split second, everything Sarah knows to be true about her life falls apart and she begins second-guessing the choices she has made, everything from giving up her career as a poet to whether Nathan is in fact the man she is meant to be with. When she decides to respond to an email sent long ago by Rajiv, a friend from her past, she wonders if he was actually her destiny. Sarah takes off for Austin, with her two kids in tow, to explore the feelings she has for Rajiv and to hopefully gain some perspective about the life she was meant to live. With much introspection and great internal conflict, Sarah ponders the ultimate question, "What if?" Stewart has written a heartwarming and wise novel about the dreams we let slip away when life gets going. It will have you wondering about your own life and whether the choices you have made are indeed the right ones or perhaps just the right ones for right now. (LEK)
In Leah Stewart's Husband and Wife, what happens when a husband's novel about infidelity is drawn from real life? The summary says: "Sarah Price is 35 years old. She doesn't feel as though she's getting older, but there are some noticeable changes: a hangover after two beers, the stray gray hair, and, most of all, she's called "Mum" by two small children. Always responsible, Sarah traded her MFA for a steady job, which allows her husband, Nathan, to write fiction. But Sarah is happy and she believes Nathan is too, until a truth is revealed: Nathan's upcoming novel, Infidelity, is based in fact. Suddenly Sarah's world is turned upside down. Adding to her confusion, Nathan abdicates responsibility for the fate of their relationship and of his novel's publication - a financial lifesaver they have been depending upon - leaving both in Sarah's hands. Reeling from his betrayal, she is plagued by dark questions. How well does she really know Nathan? And, more important, how well does she know herself? For answers, Sarah looks back to her artistic twenty-something self to try to understand what happened to her dreams. When did it all seem to change? Pushed from her complacent plateau, Sarah begins to act - for the first time not so responsibly - on all the things she has let go of for so long: her blank computer screen; her best friend, Helen; the volumes of Proust on her bookshelf. And then there is that e-mail in her inbox: a note from Rajiv, a beautiful man from her past who once tempted her to stray. The struggle to find which version of herself is the essential one - artist, wife, or mother - takes Sarah hundreds of miles away from her marriage on a surprising journey." Husband and Wife is out in May. Stewart is the author of the 2005 novel The Myth of You and Me.