Leaving by Degrees

There’s turmoil on Albero Lane in Jefferton, Massachusetts.

Cody Black, a once-esteemed writer who hasn’t published a novel in two decades, a writing professor who has trouble keeping his hands off his students, is waiting for Babette Carter, the love of his life, to become a widow. As he waits, he offloads his unrequited love on all the wrong women.

Next door to Black, eighty-three year old Lena Perkinson feels she is falling short in finding the patience, tolerance, and physical strength she needs to care for Lewis, her seventy-two year old husband, as he slips further into dementia. Although she knows needs help, Lena doesn’t want anyone else caring for the love of her life.

At the end of the lane Stubb O’Leary, a sixty-five year old curmudgeon landscaper, has been sober for more than a decade; however his days of not drinking have not repaired the relationship with his son, removed the anger that has poisoned his life, or prepared him to guide and mentor for his eighteen year old computer addict grandson Charlie. Within a day of his arrival from California, Charlie lets his grandfather know that he is not about to play the game Stubb has devised to teach the teen some responsibility.

Down the hill from Albero Lane, retired botany professor Duff Elgin has been diagnosed with bladder cancer. As the taciturn Scotsman gets sicker, he feels that his old friends, Cody Black and Stubb O’Leary, are abandoning him. Duff begins to accept that he might have to face the ravages of his illness and the harshness of its treatments all by himself.

On Jefferton College’s idyllic campus, senior student Frida Broome considers how she might use her brains and body to jolt her professor, Cody Black, into doing the kind of writing which once won him praise.

Over the course of six months the lives of Cody, Lena, Stubb, Charlie, Duff and Frida interweave and entangle. Some find love. Others lose it. Some discover the frailty of their strengths. Others are faced with the persistence of their weaknesses. Some are led to forgive those who have wronged them. Others seek to forgive themselves for the harm they have done. All are forced to come to terms with the inevitability of change.