Jerry Engels is a promiscuous, forever in love young man who we first met in Thomas Rogers’s novel At the Shores (Simon & Schuster, 1980). With a graceful agility that is both comic and touchingly human, Thomas Rogers shows the confusion and heartache of reconciling young, uninhibited passion with mature emotional attachment.

In Rogers’s new novel, we find Jerry at Penn State, where he is failing most of his classes and still worrying about women, perpetual love, and his increasing promiscuity. After recovering from the broken heart he suffered losing Rosalind, Jerry has made the rounds through girlfriends and casual encounters, with the occasional married housewife or prostitute thrown in for good measure. Dispirited by a recent breakup but resilient as ever, Jerry takes a weekend vacation to clear his head. Here he chances upon Elizabeth, his attractive (and recently divorced) Freshman Composition instructor, and they spend one passionate night together.

But when reason reawakens the next morning and Elizabeth returns to Penn State alone, it seems likely that the two will go their separate ways. But Jerry refuses to let her drop him; he tracks her down and--to the reader's delight and Elizabeth’s surprise--she finds herself won over by Jerry’s innocuous charms. Through Jerry’s candidly quirky yet familiar voice, Rogers illuminates the bewildering complexity of youthful passion, true love, and the perils of trying to walk the line in between. Yes--as Jerry finally proves--it can be done.

Praise for Jerry Engels:

“The light music of Rogers’s style, the wry modesty of his language and the pouncing accuracy of his observations are easily enjoyed. ‘Her dress came slithering off like a tarpaulin from some public monument.’ Any book containing that line is worth reading. But it is the extra dimension of comic-rhapsodic gladness that may turn “Jerry Engels” into a classic. Thomas Rogers was born in 1927. Without condescending, we can surely salute the achievement of an author in his late 70’s who has written a book as deft, unshadowed and light on its feet as this.”

--The New York Times Book Review