Damn Love — Jasmine Beach-Ferrara

Set in San Francisco and North Carolina, the linked stories in Damn Love introduce us to a group of characters struggling with love in all its complicated forms, including a young doctor who treats heroin addicts, a newly married gay man who tries to reconcile with his mother after years of estrangement, a trio of physicists caught in a surprising love triangle, and a soldier who takes secrets with her to the Iraqi desert. Together, these stories report from the fault lines of American life, uncertain territory where identity, risk, and desire comingle, and where resilience is found in even the most flawed efforts to connect.