'The Last Time They Met' by Anita Shreve

The Last Time They Met by Anita Shreve is a complicated and deeply moving rendition of lost and found love. When a 17-year-old poet in Boston named Thomas Jane meets his equal in an orphaned girl named Linda he is in love for life. The teenagers are quickly drawn into an epic romance that defines their lives.

Thomas and Linda meet again in Kenya when they are both 26 and married to others. The reunion brings up memories of the car accident that separated them. Their renewed affair once again results in tragedy.

The soulmates connect for the final time a lifetime later in Toronto for a poetry conference when they are 52. Linda is a minor poet while Thomas has become an American version of T.S. Eliot. This is the most heartbreaking part of their relationship when the truth of their young love comes to light and shatters a carefully constructed fantasy that defined them.