The Realm of Last Chances

Book excerpt: A Washington Post Notable Book When Kristin Stevens loses her job at a prestigious California university, she and her husband, Cal, relocate to suburban Massachusetts, where Kristin is forced to take a position at a third-tier college. She becomes entangled in the internal politics of academia, while Cal spends his days alone, fixing up their new home. Soon, Kristin finds herself drawn to their younger neighbor, first as platonic confidants bound by a love of literature and then, inevitably, as something more. In The Realm of Last Chances, Steve Yarbrough gives us a richly nuanced portrait of relationships, loneliness, and a marriage, reinvented.