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Novels that are based on life on a college campus often are about young people.

 
But when Dean Bakopoulos, a writer-in-residence at Grinnell College in Iowa decided to put the town in the summer spotlight, he focused on older people who, having seen something of life, wonder what went wrong.

 
"It's about questions that get asked and then can't be unasked," he said. "So in this novel, one of the key moments is when a wife turns to her husband of many years and asks the question, 'Why are we still married?' And once that question is thrown on the table, many things start to unravel for the couple."

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The woman is Claire Lowry, who published a novel some years ago. She's trying to write a second book but finds her life — including her marriage — has somehow inhibited her ability to imagine it.

 
Her husband Don is a realtor whose name is plastered all over billboards around Grinnell. Outwardly successful, he's a workaholic whose business is in the tank. Both Don and Claire have intense encounters with others that lead them to question their apparently solid marriage.

 
Bakopoulos had been working on the book for a while when real life intervened in a way that mirrored the story he was trying to tell.

 
"About midway through writing the novel, my own marriage fell apart," he said. "My wife sort of asked that question the wife in the book asks."

 
After 17 years of marriage, the breakup destroyed his perception of himself as a good husband and devoted father.

 
"When that identity got blown apart, I actually started the novel over and began to write with, I think, a level of hard-earned wisdom and maturity that I hadn't had before that experience," he said.

 
Bakopoulos wrote the first draft in just 30 days, then reworked it until the characters felt true to him.

 
"I was really interested in writing a novel about marriage, knowing it's been done many, many times, especially a marriage that falls apart at midlife, and trying to come at it from a different angle," he said, "with a marriage that was on a lot of levels good, where the characters probably did love each other, but they simply couldn't stay married anymore."

 
In the novel, Claire bumps into Charlie, a failed actor who has returned to Grinnell to clear out his dying father's house. They end up skinny dipping in the pool. Don stumbles across a recent graduate back in Grinnell, grieving after the sudden death of the woman she was in love with. Don wakes up next to her the following morning.
 


"All the characters in this book think a little too much and this becomes maybe one other of their downfalls," he said. "They never have been able to get out of their own head and just enjoy the present moment."

 
Bakopoulos said he half hoped that he might create something so wonderful that it would resolve his marital problems. That didn't happen, but he said writing the book helped him deal with the grief. It also helped him reach "a place of brightness" he hopes readers will find reflected in "Summerlong."

 
Despite the angst and grief inside its pages, "Summerlong" is wryly funny, a quality that has won it praise.

 
"The comedy became a sort of coping mechanism for me to keep writing," Bakopoulos said. "I had to keep amusing myself and putting in unexpected jokes, putting in some minor characters that might add some levity, because otherwise I don't know if I'd be able to finish the novel.

 
"I love that the novel is called dark and sexy and brooding, but most of the reviewers tend to talk about how funny it is too."

 
Bakopoulos reads from the book Friday at 7 p.m. at the Magers & Quinn Bookstore in Minneapolis. He'll be introduced by his mentor and friend Charles Baxter, who wrote his own restless summer novel, "Feast of Love," a few years ago. Bakopoulos acknowledges the book's influence and said he values the 20 years of correspondence he has shared with Baxter.

 
He also cherishes the responses he has received from readers. At a reading Thursday in Detroit he bumped into an old high school friend.

 
"He said, 'This novel says the things I've been feeling for the last few years, and I have never been able to articulate them  — and when I read this book I realized there are a whole lot of us going through this,'" Bakopoulos recalled.

 
"He's not somebody who reads a ton of books, especially maybe not literary fiction, and he was genuinely moved by the book," the author said of his friend. "I was profoundly moved by that."

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In "Summerlong," author Dean Bakopoulos delivers a steamy story of middle-aged loss. A husband and wife lose touch and wonder what went wrong.

A sexy novel emerges from questions that can't be unasked

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