When All Is Said and Done — Robert Hill

A distinctive portrait of a 1960s marriage by debut novelist Robert Hill

Eight years and four jobs and five pregnancies and meetings and train schedules and formula and diapers and deadlines and clients and mortgage and croup and a revolving door of baby nurses and Dan stagnating in that civilian job I convinced him to take when the Air Force wanted him back for Korea of all things, they got Elvis, they didn't need Dan, a man of his age, for crying out loud, and after what they did to him in that hospital upstate . . .

It is the early 1960s, and Myrmy stubs her toe in the predawn hours on her way to soothe her infant son, cursing the latest nurse for not waking up, again. Dressed to the nines, it is Myrmy who is off to an executive position writing advertising copy for shampoo. Her husband, Dan, who fought in two wars, sells ties and cooks dinner. A Jewish couple living in an exclusive suburb of New York, Myrmy powers through her life in high heels and Dan silently suffers the mysterious aftereffects of a radiation experiment conducted by the military. Together they raise a family.

Robert Hill offers a distinctive and breathless portrayal of an ordinary, and extraordinary, marriage told through the alternating voices of husband and wife. When All Is Said and Done is steeped in an era, but the anatomy of a marriage―comprised of humor, fear, love, and vulnerability―resonates through the ages.