The First Warm Evening of the Year

This talky, intimate look at grief and lost relationships begins with the death of Laura Wells, a music teacher in a small upstate New York town. Geoffrey Tremont, her old college friend, is enlisted to execute her will, despite not having seen her in decades. When he travels to her hometown, he meets her best friend, Marian Ballantine, who is still consumed with grief over the loss of her husband 10 years before. They’re immediately attracted to each other, but as each is involved with someone else, they have to decide what they’re willing to sacrifice—and how vulnerable they can be—in order to get together. In Saul’s latest novel (after Light of Day), characters negotiate the processes of loving, grieving, and healing in different ways, but they do so often in long conversations overburdened with psychoanalysis, making for difficult going at times. Still, there’s much to make this novel compelling. Agent: Joy Harris. (May)