Total Eclipse of the Heart

Stories of people looking for, finding and losing romance all over the world.

WHERE LOVE IS FOUND

24 Tales of Connection

Edited by Susan Burmeister-Brown and Linda B. Swanson-Davies

Washington Square. 399 pp. Paperback. $15

Come February, our thoughts naturally turn to love and its material trappings: wildly overpriced roses, giant heart-shaped boxes of chocolates, saccharine Hallmark expressions of fidelity. But now, just in time for Valentine's Day, there's a collection of stories that delves into the day-to-day realities of relationships, as depressing and grim as real life can be.

Where Love is Found: 24 Tales of Connection , edited by Susan Burmeister-Brown and Linda B. Swanson-Davies of the literary quarterly Glimmer Train, is a diverse, mostly engaging anthology that crosses cultural, geographic and chronological lines while exploring a common theme -- our universal need to bond, in spite of a range of obstacles, or perhaps because of them.

So where, exactly, is love found? The answer, according to this book, is often in the strangest and most unexpected of places: an illicit coupling in the backroom of a kosher bakery in 19th-century Jerusalem, a highly charged locker room exchange between a young, married divinity student and an attractive stranger, and even a solitary, reflective moment in church.

In "All of Me," for instance, by Erika Krouse, Lucy tracks down the transplant patient who inherited the heart of her dead boyfriend and invites herself to move in with him. A relationship slowly develops between them; meanwhile, the nameless narrator finds himself wanting to make amends for past bad behavior and eager to take up the hobbies of his new organ's previous owner, such as motorcycles, chicken fingers, light beer -- and making love to Lucy. "This is my life," he concludes. "I build things out of fragments. I love a strange girl. Sometimes I look in the mirror and suddenly beat my own chest with my fists. I'm a better man. There's a miracle happening right now inside me, in the blood pushing through my veins. This heart beats faster than my last one. I'm still alive. Every second is a mystery."

In "Morning Prayers," a pair of young newlyweds trek across Malaysia. They are a familiar type, writes Christopher Bundy: "Val and Berdy liked the same things -- waiting out afternoon rainstorms in open-air food stalls and drinking beer until sleepy; following step for step the museum guides, headphones and pamphlets on and open as they soaked up history and culture; haggling for fruit, for the incense that they always carried, for rooms, for anything familiar -- but, for the time being, they didn't like each other." However, when a bus accident tears the two apart, a devastated and terribly lost Berdy is left alone with his memories of their interactions. For the moment he must rely on the kindness of two Muslim cab drivers who don't speak his language but nonetheless try to soften the blow.

A number of these stories mine the often disappointing connections between parents and children, although two of the best deal with couples who have yet to reproduce. In "Beneath the Earth of Her," by Karen E. Outen, an African American couple find their expected familial roles reversed: Stokely is a "brother with a biological clock," while Freida is "a woman who does not yearn for a baby." Paul Rawlins's fine and moving "Ours" follows a couple dealing with the long-term ramifications of at least five miscarriages, living with the ghosts of the babies that might have been. The family dog watches out for the spirits under a backyard tree and in closets, while husband and wife try to convince each other that none of this is their fault: "You take turns being the one who knows, like you take turns at being most everything after you've been together for a while -- the strong one, the grouch, coach, prophet, martyr."

Of course, this wouldn't be a true Valentine's Day collection without at least one account of good old unrequited love: the elegant, spare "Gary Garrison's Wedding Vows," by Ron Carlson. In this piece, an attractive Radcliffe dropout heads west to find herself and some larger purpose at a bird sanctuary. Soon she agrees to marry a man, but only if the wild geese she's observed all season long -- animals who mate for life and always fly together -- call at the appointed hour. It's left to another potential suitor, a man who loves her but can't bring himself to act on his feelings, to sound the birds' song himself, as the geese have already departed for parts unknown. It's a painfully unselfish act and, for the bride, "it was all she needed to hear. She knew all about it, and she raised her finger for the ring."

In the end, it's a tribute to both the editors and their authors that nearly every story in this collection offers some fresh insight into the well-trod topic of love -- a thought or moment or expression that the reader can relate to and even learn from -- although, admittedly, certain tales are a bit more revelatory than others, and there are a few Lifetime Movie moments. Still, at this time of year, even the truest romantic should note that love of all sorts can blossom, persevere or end in spectacular fashion in almost any circumstance -- and it's hardly ever about that costly bouquet, although roses can be beautiful, and smell nice, too. ·

Carolyn Kleiner Butler is a freelance writer in Washington, D.C.