Scholar Mine

An Ohio State Love Story

Jose and Sharyn goofed up in their twenties and they've paid for it. Now in their mid-thirties, they encounter one another in the History Department at Ohio State University, he as a graduate student and T.A., she as a staff member. Struggling with notions about feminism, legitimacy, and The American Dream, Sharyn is drawn to the magnetic, studious Jose. She watches him and waits for him to return her gaze. Nothing happens, so she goes after him with a vengeance, setting in motion a tale of mutual love, passion, longing, and ultimately, tragedy. SCHOLAR MINE is both literary and accessible. It is the unforgettable true story of a couple who work behind the scenes at a huge university, and who also strive to create a life together in their community of Colonial Hills in Worthington, Ohio. They struggle and they achieve, but their talents aren't rewarded in quite the ways they've counted on. Despite that, Jose and Sharyn reap a life of great joy and emotional riches. SCHOLAR MINE weaves together several genres. It's a memoir and a love story, told without sticky sentiment. It's an ethnography of Ohio State University, which becomes a character in its own right. It's a cultural history of the mid-eighties through the early 2000s. It is partly an epistolary tale. It's an expose of the T.A. system and its pitfalls. Finally, SCHOLAR MINE recounts what it's like to be a pawn of the cancer industry in a huge teaching hospital, presenting in almost unbearably graphic detail the decline and death of a young, unsung scholar whose example still instructs everyone who knew him.