The Heart of Winter, by Jonathan Evison (Dutton, 368 pages)
A 70-year marriage is unfathomable to most. After all, approximately half of all marriages end in divorce (not a myth, according to a recent Forbes article), and, logistically, you’d have to marry young and you’d both have to live beyond the average life expectancy to hit that 70-year mark. But if a marriage were to endure for 70 years — how?
The Heart of Winter by Jonathan Evison sheds some light on this as it follows Abe and Ruth Winter’s journey from college-age courting (very reluctantly on Ruth’s part) to 90th birthdays and end-of-life planning.
The book gets off to a slow start as Abe unenthusiastically allows his family to celebrate his 90th birthday. Evison does the reader no favors by naming dozens of characters up front: the Winters’ living children — Anne, Kyle and Maddie — plus their significant others and their kids and their kids and their pets, plus family friends.
It seems trivial to point this out now that I’ve finished the book and mostly enjoyed it, but the fact is that it almost made me put it down and not pick it up again — too many people to try to remember, plus dialogue that makes their grown children sound like teenagers, which adds to the confusion around who’s who. Meanwhile, Abe is lamenting that he’s still alive, making for a depressing start.
But get past the beginning and you’ll find the answers to that “how” question, laid out by Evison in shifting perspectives between Ruth and Abe, and shifting timelines between present day and various impactful years in their marriage.
The answers, it seems, are resilience, patience, perseverance and tolerance, a recipe of big words mixed with steadfast love.
From the moment they meet in college, it’s clear that Abe and Ruth are very different people, and Ruth does her best to avoid him at all costs. But Abe is enamored by her spirit and free will and eventually wears her down. They date, and before she can graduate Ruth gets pregnant. They get married, and Ruth is suddenly a stay-at-home mom with little use for her books of poetry and lofty ideals.
Ruth is not unhappy, but she isn’t exactly happy either. And so Abe, without Ruth’s knowledge, accepts a job and buys a farmhouse on Bainbridge Island, a ferry ride away from the hustle and bustle of Seattle and not exactly the kind of life Ruth thought she’d be living when she was deep into her studies of the liberal arts. But Abe is convinced she will love life on the farm, where she can garden and raise chickens and take care of the kids. She’s mad, really mad, at his presumptuousness but ultimately acquiesces, and another chapter of their life together begins.
Ruth does like living on the farm, as it turns out, at least for a while. But as Abe focuses on his growing business and ensuring his family is financially set, Ruth has moments of restlessness. Keep in mind that we’re exploring 70 years of life together, so of course life doesn’t always go smoothly. They experience a number of situations that could have ended another couple: Abe’s unilateral decision to move the family, the tragic loss of a child, a brief infidelity (Ruth), an even briefer exploration of sexuality (also Ruth), absentee parenting (Abe) and differing political views (Ruth’s views being “pseudocommunist malarkey” and “unreasonable optimism,” as far as Abe is concerned).
And through it all, Evison keeps bringing us back to present day, where they squabble like the old married couple they are.
“‘Minor inconvenience?’” Abe says to Ruth about the CPAP machine she insists he use. “‘You try strapping that contraption on! Every time I open my mouth, I’m like a human leaf blower.’
‘One of these mornings, you’re just not gonna wake up, you know?’
“Good,’ he said. ‘Then I won’t have to hear about it anymore.’”
They can joke at times, but they also have to face some harsh truths about old age. Ruth thinks, at one point while worrying about Abe falling in the driveway, “Everything was a high-risk proposition after eighty. To rage against the dying of the light sometimes meant shoveling the walkway or driving after dark.” (I love how Evison deftly references Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” here, subtly showing that Ruth’s love of poetry never fully dies.)
And, as Ruth undergoes an invasive procedure to save her life, she questions whether it’s worth it to keep fighting. “While she wasn’t without use, the world was hardly dependent on her participation.”
But Abe is not ready to try life without her, and his 90th-birthday thoughts of preparing for death turn into a steadfast need to be Ruth’s caretaker, despite their children’s misgivings. He drives through snow on city roads that terrify him to be with her at the hospital, and, with the deepest sense of love and commitment, brings her back to their farmhouse and tries his best to take care of her.
Like Abe and Ruth, I’m glad I made it past the beginning of their story. The Heart of Winter reminded me that love can last even through the darkest of times if your heart is in it. B+ —Meghan Siegler
Featured Image: The Heart of Winter, by Jonathan Evison