Laura

In a captivating departure, Larry Watson, "a writer whose work is worthy of prizes" (Los Angeles Times Book Review), unveils a portrait of faith, obsession, and enduring love -- and a work of greater tenderness than anything he has yet written.LauraLove captures Paul Finley, in, of all places, his own bedroom -- literally waking him from his dreams. The night he discovers Laura Pettit standing at his windowsill, Paul is eleven years old, a boy naturally inclined toward seriousness, precociously adept at the art of watching the world without being watched. Laura is twenty-two, a fiercely passionate and independent poet already experiencing the first flickers of fame, a beautiful woman on the brink of seducing Paul's father. No matter; Paul is smitten. When she leaves him to rejoin the grown-ups' party downstairs, Laura issues Paul a wholly impossible command, one that will haunt and consume both of them for the rest of their lives: "Forget me."Laying bare the inner life of one man during the course of nearly four decades, Larry Watson delivers a riveting treatise on the excruciating power of love -- and two of the most remarkable characters in recent American literature. Infused with breathtaking pathos and delicate grace,Laurais an extraordinary triumph of the novelist's art.

Larry Watson was born in Rugby, North Dakota, and raised in Bismarck. Honored with the Milkweed National Fiction Prize, a National Endowment of the Arts award, the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Association Regional Book Award, and numerous other literary prizes, Watson teaches English at the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point. He is also the author of White Crosses, Justice, Montana 1948, In a Dark Time, and the poetry collection Leaving Dakota.