Arthur Less is a failed novelist about to turn fifty when a wedding invitation arrives in the mail...from his boyfriend of the past nine years, now engaged to someone else. He can't imagine saying yes--it would be too awkward--and he can't say no--it would look like defeat. On his desk are a series of invitations to half-baked literary events around the world, so he decides the best way to arrange to skip town is to accept them all. What could possibly go wrong? Arthur will almost fall in love in Paris, almost fall to his death in Berlin, barely escape to a Moroccan ski chalet from a Saharan sand storm, accidentally book himself as the (only) writer-in-residence at a Christian Retreat Center in Southern India, and encounter, on a desert island in the Arabian Sea, the last person on Earth he wants to face. Somewhere in there: he will turn fifty. Through it all, there is his first love. And there is his last. Because despite all these mishaps, missteps, misunderstandings, this is, above all, a love story.
