A DUAL INHERITANCE

For readers of "Rules of Civility" and "The Marriage Plot, " Joanna Hershon's "A Dual Inheritance" is an engrossing novel of passion, friendship, betrayal, and class--and their reverberations across generations. Autumn 1962: Ed Cantowitz and Hugh Shipley meet in their final year at Harvard. Ed is far removed from Hugh's privileged upbringing as a Boston Brahmin, yet his drive and ambition outpace Hugh's ambivalence about his own life. These two young men form an unlikely friendship, bolstered by a fierce shared desire to transcend their circumstances. But in just a few short years, not only do their paths diverge--one rising on Wall Street, the other becoming a kind of global humanitarian--but their friendship ends abruptly, with only one of them understanding why. Can a friendship define your view of the world? Spanning from the Cuban Missile Crisis to the present-day stock market collapse, with locations as diverse as Dar es Salaam, Boston, Shenzhen, and Fishers Island, "A""Dual Inheritance" asks this question, as it follows not only these two men, but the complicated women in their vastly different lives. And as Ed and Hugh grow farther and farther apart, they remain uniquely--even surprisingly--connected. Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader's Circle for author chats and more. "A big, captivating sweep of a romance . . . a searching exploration of class and destiny in late-twentieth-century America."--Jennifer Egan "The best book about male friendship written this young century."--"Details" " " "[A] warm, smart, enjoyably complex novel . . . Both Hugh and Ed are lonely searchers . . . and [Hershon's] skill in rendering each of them as flawed individuals is what makes the novel so readable and so rich. . . . "A Dual Inheritance" is an old-fashioned social novel that feels fresh because of its deft, clear-eyed approach to still-unspoken rules about ethnicity, money and identity."--"San Francisco Chronicle"