The Summer Before the Summer of Love — Marly A. Swick

The stories in The Summer Before the Summer of Love seductively combine life's barren sorrow with a sensual fullness. Marly Swick is consistently original and unflinching in her observations of the dynamics between friends and lovers, parents and children, husbands and wives. In "The Other Widow," a grieving mistress meets her deceased lover's wife; in "Crete," a woman who once escaped a grisly murder now finds herself faced with her daughter's death and the fear that her baby's life was taken because her own had been spared; in the title story, a girl goes to a Beatles concert with her mother and sister and faces the tough emotional balancing act posed by her parents' recent separation. In a style that is as exquisite as it is unsentimental, Swick creates a true sense of how people really do live--and love--and does so with grace, intelligence and humor.