
Mark Sternum, a professor who teaches spelling and grammar at Boston's McClintock College, is full of droll observations about the rules that govern our language, but he leads a diligent if somewhat detached life. Friends and family try to coax him into deeper involvement, yet...


"Mark Sternum is a vanishing breed: the grammarian. His love of order extends into his meticulously constructed life, but love and family, he learns, can't be made to agree as easily as subject and verb. One summer, he suddenly finds himself a not-entirely-unwilling outcast of...