Excerpt from The Explanation for Everything by Lauren Grodstein, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"How do I find you again? If you're not coming back to Princeton?"

"You call me," she said, making it sound like an instruction. He called her. She called him back. That easy. They were married at the Princeton Faculty Club in front of forty people a year later, her parents from Arizona, his mother from Ohio. Rosenblum did the officiating, which was a service he provided to all comers so that no man would be forced to interact with clergy in order to participate in a state institution, like marriage.

Lou promised she would nurture him. Andy promised he would take care of her for the rest of her days. They honeymooned in Paris, he wrote his dissertation in their tiny studio in Philadelphia, and once he was officially Dr. Waite, they moved to Miami for his postdoc. There, she worked twelve-hour shifts in the NICU of Kendall Regional. He performed EEGs on rats. At night, in the air-conditioned haven of their moderately priced apartment in Quail Run ("Whence the quail?" she would ask. "Where do they run?") they would lie together in their bed and imagine their future children.

Excerpted from The Explanation for Everything by Lauren Grodstein. Copyright © 2013 by Lauren Grodstein. Excerpted by permission of Algonquin Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.