Log of the S.S. The Mrs. Unguentine is a masterpiece of modern domestic life, a comic novel of closeness and difficulty, miscommunication and stubborn resolve.

"Forty years ago I first linked up with Unguentine and we made love on twin-hulled catamarans, sails a-billow, bless the seas . . ."

So begins the courtship of a certain Unguentine to the woman we know only as “Mrs. Unguentine,” the chronicler of their sad, fantastical tale. For forty years, they sail the seas together, alone on a giant land-covered barge of their own devising. They tend their gardens, raise a child, invent an artificial forest—all the while steering clear of civilization.

Rarely has a book so perfectly registered the secret solitude of marriage, how shared loneliness can result in a powerful bond.

Stanley Crawford has written and farmed with his wife Rosemary in Northern New Mexico since 1969. He is the author of five novels and three works of nonfiction and has been the recipient of two NEA writing fellowships and a three year Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Writing Award. Recently he has taught at Colorado College and with the UMass/Amherst MFA Writing Program.

Ben Marcus was born in Chicago in 1967. The son of a mathematician and a literary scholar, he was raised in the Midwest, Austin, London, Aarhus, and New York. He holds degrees from New York University and Brown University, and has taught at schools in Texas, Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island. In addition to The Age of Wire and String, he is also the author of Notable American Women, Leaving the Sea, New American Stories, and Notes from the Fog.