A young man and woman meet, love each other, and are consumed. It's a story as old as romance itself, but in this enthralling novel John Burnham Schwartz tells it with heart-stopping new immediacy. In the middle of a rainstorm Julian Rose, a self-effacing Harvard graduate student, takes refuge beneath a girl's yellow umbrella. The girl, the woman, is Claire Marvel, lovely, mercurial, mired in family tragedy. She is the last person someone like Julian should fall in love with. But he does.
What ensues is a great and difficult passion strewn with obstacles-not least those arising from...