A Celibate Season

Carol Shields, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and Blanche Howard, winner of the Canadian Booksellers' Award, teamed up to write this delightful epistolary novel that probes the inner life of one couple's rocky marriage. Faced with a job-related ten-month separation, Jocelyn and Charles choose to maintain contact through letters -- an economic decision that paves the way for two very different and very entertaining sides of the same story. As the months progress, the couple's letters grow less frequent and more revealing -- and their "season of celibacy" becomes more of a challenge than either Jocelyn or Charles had imagined. Posing important and timely questions about commitment, monogamy, and the pressures of career and money, this insightful novel by two extraordinary writers offers a perceptive and hopeful look at how men and women really communicate.