The Natural History of Uncas Metcalfe: A Novel

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St. Martin's Publishing Group, Apr 1, 2007 - Fiction - 240 pages

Uncas Metcalfe is a sixty-five-year-old botany professor from a once prosperous central New York town, whose habitat is changing much too quickly: his wife is ill, his daughter has returned home, and an unusual new friendship unexpectedly stirs up memories of an almost forgotten infidelity. Uncas is rooted in a life of plants and manners. When his routine is upended by the menacing demands of a former student, Uncas finds his comfortably obstinate nature at odds with his family's growing impatience and a newfound, terrifying uncertainty.

The Natural History of Uncas Metcalfe follows an unforgettable hero as he struggles to right himself and adapt to changing expectations, even as he approaches the end of his life. Beautifully wrought and wonderfully imagined, the intricacies of the Metcalfe family will linger in your imagination long after the last page.

 

Contents

Section 1
Section 2
Section 3
Section 4
Section 5
Section 6
Section 7
Section 8
Section 9
Section 10
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About the author (2007)

Betsey Osborne graduated from Harvard, attended the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and has a master of fine arts from Columbia. She has worked at Grand Street, The New Yorker, and Vanity Fair, where she is currently a Contributing Editor. She lives in Cranston, Rhode Island.

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