Back Cover Summary

When Owen Sheffield’s incendiary polemic gains national attention, he becomes the public face of campus unrest—but the heart of Tenured rests with the women whose lives are altered by his actions: Meredith Sheffield, Owen’s ex-wife, who learns to assert her own voice after years in his shadow; Dr. Asha Ellis, a fearless Black professor whose tenure is precarious despite her brilliance; Naya Cruz, an undocumented student weathering the storm of visibility; and Suvi, Owen and Meredith’s daughter, who comes of age while reckoning with the legacies her parents—and the university—leave behind. Told through interwoven perspectives, the novel shifts between faculty offices and student protests, classrooms where lectures ignite conflict, and living rooms where paper cranes are folded in fragile hope. The result is a narrative that carries forward a mix of wit and weight, capturing both the absurdity and the tenderness of academic life. With its layered characters and timely themes, it is a novel that would resonate in book groups as much as in academic circles.