Love Is a Canoe

Love Is a Canoe is a smart, funny and romantic novel about the fragility of love and marriage.

Peter Herman is something of a folk hero. Marriage Is a Canoe, his decades-old guide to love and relationships, won the hearts of hopeful romantics and desperate cynics alike.

But now it's 2010, and his wife has just died. He passes time with a woman he admires but doesn't love. And he begins to question the advice he's doled out for decades.

Then he receives a call from Stella, an ambitious young editor who wants to celebrate the anniversary of Marriage Is a Canoe with a contest for struggling couples. The prize? An afternoon with Peter and a chance to save their relationship.

The contest ensnares Stella in the opaque politics of her publishing house, and introduces a cast of unlikely and unstable couples. Then there's Peter, who must discover what he meant when he wrote Marriage Is a Canoe if he is going to find a way to love again.

Ben Schrank is the president and publisher of Razorbill, a Penguin imprint that is home to many award-winning and New York Times bestselling books for children and young adults. He is also the author of the novels Consent and Miracle Man. He grew up in Brooklyn where he lives with his wife and son.

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'Schrank has done something here that may sound impossible: He's written a funny novel about publishing that is not caustic but optimistic, not biting but bighearted.' New York Times

'Sharply funny, beautifully original.' Kate Christensen, author of The Austral and The Great Man

'Funny, tender, wholly original - it's as if all the good fairies came to its christening. (Story, dialogue, character, heart.) I loved it.' Laura Lippman, author of And When She Was Good and The Most Dangerous Thing