Publication Date: January 19, 2026
A Moment’s Surrender follows freshman writing instructor Paul Bishop in the aftermath of the murder of his former best friend, the renowned poet Tom Corbin. Haunted by guilt and bound by a devastating secret, Paul takes it upon himself to care for Tom’s terminally ill widow, Susan. But the truth he withholds — that Tom had planned to leave Susan for another woman, Paul’s own long-ago lover Rachel Lake — draws Paul into a painful triangle of loyalty, betrayal, and unresolved desire. Caught between the two women, Paul must navigate a web of grief and deception that threatens to undo them all.
After a friend’s murder, Paul Bishop faces two women unknowingly connected by a web of secrets.
Author John Burt uses A Moment’s Surrender to highlight the messiness of love. Paul finds himself in a predicament upon discovering Tom plans to leave his wife and child for another woman—who happens to be Paul’s former girlfriend.
That knowledge becomes significant after Tom’s untimely murder en route to the girlfriend’s place. Paul wrestles with how much to reveal, only to get pulled into the widow’s life as she faces a terminal illness.
The author constructs a solid storyline, but the formal tone and mix of past/present events serve up a more challenging reading experience. What does translate clearly is Paul’s dilemma about whether to tell Susan about her husband’s plans.
A Moment’s Surrender showcases the literary world that connects Paul and Tom while illuminating an emotionally fraught scenario full of complications.
I have been a professor at Brandeis University for more than forty years. Although this is my first novel, I have published three volumes of poetry, The Way Down (Princeton UP, 1988), Work without Hope (Johns Hopkins UP, 1996), and Victory (Turning Point, 2007). My most recent scholarly book Lincoln’s Tragic Pragmatism (Harvard UP 2013) was reviewed on the front page of the New York Times Book review when it appeared. I am also the literary executor of the novelist and poet Robert Penn Warren.
