On the morning of his 90th birthday, Abe Winter regards himself in the mirror. “He had the look of a man who was liable to get lost on his way to the kitchen, a man easily coerced into sending a sizable check to the next telemarketer who happened to solicit him on the county’s last remaining landline.”

Abe’s wife, Ruth, is in the kitchen making potato salad for the party. We meet their children --- Anne, Kyle and Maddie --- who have returned to their childhood farmhouse on Bainbridge Island, Washington. Naturally, Anne, the oldest at 68, gets right to “the downsizing lecture.” But the elder Winters have no intention of giving up the home they’ve lived in for 64 years.

"Evison’s skillful character- and scene-building will engross any reader who cares about human beings. And isn’t that just about all of us?"

After a lovely dinner with kids and friends, Abe “could not help but acknowledge his extraordinarily good fortune. The next time these cherished people assembled in one place, Abe would almost certainly be in a casket.” He’d like to outlive Ruth to save her the hassle of dealing with his death, but he has no real worries about his vivacious, capable wife. There is just the pesky matter of Ruth’s wiggly tooth.

But, of course, it’s not a small matter. There’s a mass. A biopsy. Children to tell. A decision to make.

Flashback to 1953, at the University of Washington, where a small-town, studious young woman named Ruth Warneke relishes the sophistication and opportunities on campus. Ruth’s roommate, Mandy, convinces Ruth to accompany her and her fiancé on a blind date with a junior named Abe Winter. At first glance, she thinks he’s rather handsome despite his bowtie. But after some conversation, she finds him insufferably cocky. “Worse, within minutes, Ruth had surmised that Abe was a Republican, what with his talk of economic prosperity and limiting big government spending: It couldn’t have been clearer if he’d tattooed ‘I Like Ike’ on his big, dumb forehead.”

We know what is going to happen, of course, but the charm lies in the topsy-turvy story of these two young people as they fall in love, get pregnant, marry, move to Bainbridge Island, and face all the quotidian challenges that life throws at a couple. The device of cutting from present-time plot development to past episodes in Abe and Ruth’s life is well done and adds to the effective pacing of THE HEART OF WINTER.

Jonathan Evison presents his characters with affection and humor. Before winning Ruth, lovesick Abe tries to remake himself, and she spots him at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle standing before a contemporary piece, “his head cocked curiously to one side like a springer spaniel confronted with the Fibonacci sequence.” Ruth and Abe will never agree on politics, but they learn to accept and live with that, although it doesn’t stop them from sparring. Evison thoroughly and compassionately explores how bored and exhausted Ruth is being confined to a small apartment with young children, as much as she loves them. But he just as sympathetically portrays the monotonous work that Abe does as a junior underwriter at Safeco.

As the decades go by and small triumphs and terrible losses accrue, their relationship waxes and wanes, as all long-term relationships must. But they are left with an unbreakable bond --- unbreakable until death.

Full disclosure: I live on Bainbridge Island, so the details about restaurants gone by, annoying new roundabouts, and weather (“fall, fall, fall and summer”) made THE HEART OF WINTER that much more fun. But I think that Evison’s skillful character- and scene-building will engross any reader who cares about human beings. And isn’t that just about all of us?