the book

A professor of biology at a liberal arts college of limited reputation attempts to use his science to explain why his marriage has run into difficulty.

Is it because males are hardwired to cheat, or because females are? And what does cheating mean? Like his life, the answer is more complicated than he expected, thanks to a former student-cum-colleague who may make the answer moot.

If there even is an answer.

The working subtitle of this book was Men 101.  It was written with the help of a dear friend, female and roughly the same age as the protagonist’s wife, who frequently commented that she didn’t know that, that she thought that might be the case, that guys are just wrong about that, etc.  Its intent was specifically to help women understand their men, any men, ordinary men. No holds are barred; in that respect it is essentially non-fiction.

The biology in the book is meant to be authentic.  The references to Darwin’s On The Origin of Species are (should be) legitimate.  Anatomical terms from Gray’s Anatomy (the classic medical treatise, not “Grey’s Anatomy,” the television show) are used frequently because, well, they can be sort of hot and they are, after all, what things are called, regardless of the current slang. Lloyd’s The Case of the Female Orgasm is also a real book, by Elisabeth Lloyd, but the author does not mean to imply Dr. Lloyd endorses (or is even aware of) this novel by any means; naming her book is in the interest of realism only, like calling a car a Camaro.

The author originally intended to write a book he called Fidelity, which was meant to be an exploration of monogamy, to be followed about ten years later by Infidelity, real or imagined.  Life got in the way and although much writing was done, it was mainly for his personal pleasure.  But the two books merged in his mind and became this one.  It’s not been shopped to publishing houses.

This book, a novel, should not be confused with the autobiography of Paul Rusesabagina, a survivor of the Rwandan genocide of 1994, written with Tom Zoellner, that is named An Ordinary Man; An Autobiography. His is a true story, based upon his life in Africa. My book is fiction, based upon nobody’s life in Fairhaven.