Roxana Robinson in Conversation with Lily King

What does love demand of us, and who must pay the price?

What risks would you be willing to take to fall in love again?

“I never thought I’d see you here,” Sarah says. Then she adds, “But I never thought I’d see you anywhere.”

Sarah and Warren’s college love story ended in a single moment. Decades later, when a chance meeting brings them together, a passion ignites threatening the foundations of their lives. Since they parted in college, each has married, raised a family, and made a career. When they meet again, Sarah is divorced and living outside New York, while Warren is still married and living in Boston.

Seeing Warren sparks an awakening in Sarah, who feels emotionally alive for the first time in decades. Still, she hesitates to reclaim a chance at love after her painful divorce and years of framing her life around her children and her work. Warren has no such reservations: he wants to leave his marriage but fears how his wife and daughter will react. As their affair intensifies, Sarah and Warren must confront the moral responsibilities of their love for their families and each other.

An engrossing exploration of the vows we make to one another, the tensile relationships between parents and their children, and what we owe to others and ourselves, “Leaving is a tour de force—unfailingly clear-eyed, and its final impact shatters." (Washington Post)

Roxana Robinson is the award-winning author of six novels and three short story collections. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Atlantic, Harper’s, and other publications. She lives in New York City and Connecticut, spends as much time as she can in Maine, and teaches in the MFA program at Hunter College.

Lily King is the award-winning author of five novels. Her most recent novel, Writers & Lovers, was published on March 3rd, 2020, and her first collection of short stories, Five Tuesdays in Winter, will be released on November 9, 2021. Her 2014 novel Euphoria won the Kirkus Award, The New England Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Award. Euphoria was named one of the 10 Best Books of 2014 by The New York Times Book Review. It was included in TIME's Top 10 Fiction Books of 2014, as well as on Amazon, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, Publishers Weekly, and Salon’s Best Books of 2014

Host or Publisher Mechanics' Hall (Maine)