The Marriage Bed

A freak accident comes on the heels of a startling revelation—laying bare the foundation of a marriage, and a husband is left to grapple with the aftermath. A poetry professor at a small college in Asheville, NC, Asa Flowers, comes home one stormy evening to find his wife Betsy inexplicably distraught. As the evening goes on, the couple end up in a heated argument that sends Asa to sleep out in their garage apartment for the first time in twenty-five years of marriage. The next morning, he wakes to blue sky and an altered world. Unfolding over a few tense weeks and told from multiple points of view, this novel explores how a tragedy can assume as many shapes as the people it touches. Asa finds himself reckoning with torn feelings about his marriage and confusion about how to proceed in his complicated relationships with his adult children. As he gradually absorbs revelations—so much he didn't know or understand during his long marriage—he finds himself drawn uneasily toward a new world, one in which he must shed much of his old identity if he is to survive, and more important, rededicate himself to being a father.