Uncas Metcalfe is a 65-year-old botany professor from a once prosperous central New York town, whose habitat is changing much too quickly: his wife is ill, his daughter has returned home, and memories of an almost-forgotten infidelity have resurfaced. Uncas is rooted in a life of plants and manners. When his routine is up-ended by the menacing demands of a former student, Uncas finds his comfortably obstinate nature at odds with his family's growing impatience and a newfound, terrifying uncertainty.The Natural History of Uncas Metcalfe follows an unforgettable hero as he struggles to right himself and adapt to changing expectations, even as he approaches the end of his life. Beautifully wrought and wonderfully imagined, the Metcalfe family will linger in your imagination long after the last page.