A Brief History of Yes

Marcom's latest (The Mirror in the Well), is a haunting elegy to a relationship between Maria, a Portuguese woman living in America, and her unnamed lover. Told in fragments spanning the yearlong affair and the months following their separation, the book traces a pendulum of emotions%E2%80%94from ecstatic love to bitter desperation%E2%80%94that Maria must endure. The demise of the relationship sends Maria "closer to the imperceptible edges of things" where she is forced to reexamine all of the relationships in her life, from her abusive father and his "grievous berating words" to her ex-husband who left her for her former "horsy faced" friend. Marcom's lyrical prose casts light on the extremes of emotion and the resilience with which we are capable of dealing with lost love. Like "the earth revolving around the sun" and the "ingrained blood song" of the migratory bird, Marcom elegantly reveals love and loss as constant, cyclical forces of human existence. (June)