A hysterical new novel from the author of What's Wrong with Dorfman? Once a gangly teenager in oversized clothes, Plato G. Fussell is now handsome and independently wealthy. But inside he's still a bundle of neuroses and anxieties, with a tendency to engage in moronic word games in the presence of beautiful women. In the midst of working on his definitive ten-volume biography of Millard Fillmore, Plato finds himself dodging his vile ex-wife, trying to please his demanding elderly mother by inquiring weekly about the state of her bowels, and attempting to remain verbally coherent while courting a young woman whom he meets after her errant Frisbee connects with his cranium. As Plato blunders on in search of true love, romance, and an acceptable degree of worldwide cleanliness, he discovers that loving someone and knowing them needn't go hand-in-hand.

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Beset by awkward interpersonal skills and an obsession with classic literature, Ishmael Archer seems destined for the lonely life of a literature professor at Longfellow College. While he yearns for female companionship, a recent acrimonious divorce has left him in a state of fragility. Struggling to pay his rent, Ishmael is obliged to undertake one of his most dreaded tasks: teach a summer creative writing class. Convinced that he will be saddled with a group of malcontents who care not a whit for Tolstoy or Dickens, Ishmael is delighted to encounter the luminescent Abigail Bird, whose passion for literature equals his own. Their burgeoning romance is cut abruptly short when Abigail suffers a traumatic head wound and falls into a coma. When she finally awakes, Abigail is inexplicably changed, and Ishmael must find a way to reach the girl with whom he had originally fallen in love. Peppered with an enthralling cast of characters--a college dean obsessed with orchids, a Greek landlord with a deep affinity for the works of Ernest Hemingway, and a self-important writer who vies with Archer for Abigail's affections--The Strange Courtship of Abigail Bird is a heartwarming tale of love, loss, and rediscovery.

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