Lives and Loves: The Stories of Rowland Davis - Tapa blanda

Lives and Loves: The Stories of Rowland Davis is a collection of twenty-five stories on human relationships grouped under the rubrics "Couples," "Dysfunctional," "Friends and Family," and "Parables." The first category explores the joys and sorrows of courtship, marriage, and widowhood for men and women who manage their lives and loves in some unusual ways. Loving relationships come into being accidentally or are created by shared sorrows that nonetheless cement ties and connections. The stories in "Dysfunctional" show couples whose lives have become unraveled through a variety of factors and circumstances, including both conventional and unconventional infidelity, tragedies, slipping sanity, and inexplicable events. "Friends and Family" tells of affectionate bonds between fathers and sons, care by step-parents, friendships between women, and haunting discoveries. The stories in the last category called "Parables" begin with a tale of a failed marriage but quickly become fantastic, leaving reality behind to explore larger philosophical issues.