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“This may be the most epic love story I’ve ever, ever read.”—Jenna Bush Hager on TODAY

An intimate and lyrical celebration of great love, great art, and the sacrifices we make for both

For fifty years, Abe and Jane have been coming to Central Park, as starry-eyed young lovers, as frustrated and exhausted parents, as artists watching their careers take flight. They came alone when they needed to get away from each other, and together when they had something important to discuss. The Park has been their witness for half a century of love. Until now.

Jane is dying, and Abe is recounting their life together as a way of keeping them going: the parts they knew—their courtship and early marriage, their blossoming creative lives—and the parts they didn’t always want to know—the determined young student of Abe’s looking for a love story of her own, and their son, Max, who believes his mother chose art over parenthood, and who has avoided love and intimacy at all costs. Told in various points of view, even in conversation with Central Park, these voices weave in and out to paint a portrait as complicated and essential as love itself.

An homage to New York City, to romance, and even to loss, This Is a Love Story tenderly and suspensefully captures deep truths about life and marriage in radiant prose. It is about love that endures despite what life throws at us, or perhaps even because of it.

"Soffer’s unapologetically romantic novel includes many tales that tug at the heartstrings. First and foremost is the long marriage of Abe and Jane, a writer and an artist whose complicated, colorful life together is winding down as she lays dying. While he runs through a litany of their memories together . . . we catch glimpses of other great loves: their son’s connection with his grandmother, Jane’s mind meld with an old friend, Abe’s affinity for the march of words on a page and New Yorkers’ devotion to Central Park. Soffer’s saga goes down like bittersweet chocolate, with a hint of sugar to soften the sharp edge of loss."
—Elisabeth Egan, The New York Times (Book of the Week)

"I can't stop thinking about This is a Love Story by Jessica Soffer . . . In New York City, but perhaps in any place, there are moments between the hustle and bustle when you look up to the sky and breathe, grateful to just be for another day. Reading This is a Love Story feels a little like that. Love stories may be far from perfect, but how lucky are we?"
—USA Today

“The lyrical novel plays with perspective, most chapters include what the couple recalled from Abe’s perspective . . . but it also lends full and empathetic points of view to Jane, their son, the young student in love with Abe, and even—between each changed perspective— the voice of Central Park itself and the eclectic cast of other lovers who have called its brambling paths their own. A love letter to the panorama of life—and love—in New York City.”
—Oprah Daily

"A delightfully New York marriage... A touching romance that's also an ode to the urban oasis where it began."
—People

“Get ready to have your emotions rocked by this moving family saga about a couple’s enduring love and the son who feels left out of their story.”
—TODAY.com

“It's an ode to a marriage, but also to Central Park itself.”
—Town & Country

“Soffer’s writing is simple yet poetic. Most impressive is her ability to capture the depths of emotions of all her characters while rooting readers in such a strong sense of place…A New York love story at its finest.”
—Library Journal

"Written with delicate and beautiful brush strokes, this is a love story of a long marriage, a love story of Central Park, a story of how hard life can be, and how the hard leaves its mark, but the love does too. Every once in a while I read a novel and think, What a gift. This is one of those books."
—Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Hello Beautiful and Dear Edward

"This Is A Love Story is Jessica Soffer’s iridescent, kaleidoscopic, homerun of a novel. It’s a beautiful book of seasons, marking the cycles of a city, a family, the creative process, and a single and singular life."
—Nathan Englander, New York Times bestselling author of Dinner at the Center of the Earth

"This Is A Love Story is a revelation—the kind of novel to read in one sitting. It performs the magic trick of being a highly specific story that feels universal and timeless. When you finish, you'll find that your worldview has been gently and deftly altered by an author whose tenderness toward her characters—and toward language itself—is unparalleled."
—Liz Moore, bestselling author of Long Bright River and The God of the Woods

"With her lyrical, graceful novel of love and art, Jessica Soffer has captured the glittering magic of New York City."
—Jenny Jackson, New York Times bestselling author of Pineapple Street

Jessica Soffer is the author of This Is a Love Story and Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots. She grew up in New York City, attended Connecticut College, and earned her MFA at Hunter College. Her work has appeared in Granta, The New York Times, Real Simple, Saveur, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue, and on NPR’s Selected Shorts. She teaches creative writing to small groups and in the corporate space and lives in Sag Harbor, New York, with her family. View titles by Jessica Soffer