The Strange Courtship of Abigail Bird

Beset by awkward interpersonal skills, an obsession with classic literature and the somewhat archaic speaking style of a Jane Austen character, Ishmael Archer seems destined for the lonely life of a literature professor at the academic backwater of Longfellow College. While he yearns for female companionship, he has been left in emotional and financial disarray after his recent divorce. Struggling to pay his rent and trading in his car for a rickety bicycle, Ishmael Archer is obliged to undertake his most dreaded task: teach a summer creative writing class. Convinced that he will be saddled with a group of student malcontents who care not a whit for Tolstoy or Dickens, Ishmael is delighted to encounter the luminescent Abigail Bird, whose passion for literature equals his own. Their burgeoning romance is cut abruptly short when Abigail suffers a traumatic head wound and falls into a coma. Distraught, Ishmael reads the unconscious Abigail passages from her most cherished novels. When she finally awakes, however, Abigail is inexplicably changed and Ishmael must find a way to connect with the Abigail Bird with whom he had fallen in love. Peppered with an enthralling cast of characters—a college dean obsessed with orchids, a Greek landlord who possesses a tendency to break into dance, and a self-important writer who vies with Archer for Abigail's affections—The Strange Courtship of Abigail Bird is a heart-warming tale of love, loss, and rediscovery.