A deceptively simple gem. Ed Cantowitz, working-class and Jewish, meets Hugh Shipley, Boston Brahmin, at Harvard, and they form a tight bond. Hugh's fiancee, Helen, though not a student, completes the trio. They graduate and move apart geographically, Ed, to Wall Street and spectacular success, and Hugh, to Africa and beyond, in search of ways to use his wealth for good in remote health clinics. Many things happen to these characters - marriage, children, divorce, money made and lost - but in some ways these are incidentals. Hershon gives us the arc of two lives, grounds those lives in a specific time and place, and makes us care about what happens to them. Lovely writing.
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