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.