Eileen Pollack holds a B.S. in physics from Yale and an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is the author of two story collections, two previous novels, and two books of nonfiction, and has received fellowships from the NEA, the Michener Foundation, and the Rona Jaffe Foundation. She teaches at the Helen Zell MFA program in creative writing at the University of Michigan. Her newest novel, A Perfect Life (Ecco) considers the moral complexities of scientific discovery and the sustaining nature of love. A young researcher at MIT, Jane Weiss is obsessed with finding the genetic marker for Valentine’s Disease, a neurodegenerative disorder that killed her mother. She and her sister, Laurel, could be genetic carriers. Having seen the effect Valentine’s had on her parents’ marriage, Jane steers clear of romantic entanglement. Then, the summer before her father’s second wedding, Jane falls for her future stepbrother, Willie, whose father also died from Valentine’s, raising the odds that their love will end in tragedy. But if she succeeds in making history by finding the genetic marker, will she and her sister have the courage to face the truth this knowledge could hold for their lives?