This novel follows the aftermath of a professor’s wife losing her husband to an aneurysm (this happens immediately, not a spoiler) and the soft and monumental changes that occur. The year is 1970. A parallel story is also told, perhaps in less detail, of college student Sam. The Sam narrative is interesting enough, (New Yorker in New Hampshire, becomes radicalized to a cause when he falls in love with its leader), but the meat of the story belongs to Virginia, that widow, as she navigates completing her dissertation, finding a job, raising a teenager, helping (almost accidentally) lead the feminist movement on campus.