Brian Morton

A failed old writer is visited by a pretty young student who wants to make him the subject of her thesis. The woman's adulation--she tells him his books changed her life--goes to the writer's head and he falls in love. Observing this with a jaundiced eye is his daughter, herself a struggling writer.

Battling illness and unable to finish a novel that has taken him ten years to write, aging novelist Leonard Schiller is slipping into literary obscurity. At one time a famous author, Schiller has been all but forgotten by the readers, colleagues and critics who once praised his works. When Heather Wolfe, an ambitious graduate student, convinces Schiller that her thesis could reintroduce his writing to the world, the reclusive writer is forced to confront...