The Assigned Visit

As students in the same Harvard writing class, Susan Masters and Caleb Montiel make a pact: if either lives out a story too emotionally intense to handle, they will give it to the other to write. But the turmoil of the Vietnam era separates them, even as their stories begin to intertwine. Twenty years later, Susan receives a box of journals--a record of Caleb's social service on the Mississippi Gulf Coast following Hurricane Camille, and of his secret, transforming love not only for the people and the place, but for Grayce Chadwick, a beautiful young wife and mother, extraordinary and irresistible to Caleb. Susan embarks on writing Caleb's story--which mirrors the complicated shame the nation suffered during the Vietnam years--only to find it still entwines with her own. The Assigned Visit is a portrait of how deep emotion endures across both time and distance.

Shelly Fraser Mickle has read many humorous essays on NPR's Morning Edition, and they have been published in a collection titles "The Kids Are Gone, the Dog Is Depressed, and Mom's on the Loose." Other essays (humorous and otherwise) have been published in the Orlando Sentinel, the Tampa Tribune, and the Washington Post. She is the author of the "The Queen of October", which was a New York Times Notable Book; "Replacing Dad", which was made into a CBS Television movie; and "The Turning Hour", which received an award in 2006 from the state of Florida as part of an innovative suicide prevention program in public schools.