Michael Calderone is preparing Carmina Burana with his rambunctious chorus, Justina Trimble barrels along at 100 mph in French even in her first-year courses, two gifted and hard-driving people at a small New Hampshire college who can't get enough of each other and struggle to find a togetherness that fits them. A woman from his past breaks into their lives, stirring up Michael's old dream of operatic greatness, and Justina's old feelings of insecurity and fear of being left. Their efforts to connect to Grace, a one-in-a-million but emotionally broken young singer, increase the stakes: through the clamor of bitterness will they hear their voices calling to each other? The singing check-out lady, the visiting French scholar with Gargantuan appetites, the heart-of-gold pal from the English department who masks his loneliness with wisecracks, a boisterous choir and other supporting characters animate the story, offering their own takes on what love's got to do with it. This novel evokes 1990s small-town America when in spite of misplaced efforts it was possible to attain a state of simple human grace. Lapwing reminds us of the vulnerability of love and of its steady power.