Damn Love

Set primarily in San Francisco and North Carolina, the nine linked narratives of Beach-Ferrara’s modest debut collection explore the highs and lows of modern love, showing a wide swath of characters—gay, straight, married, divorced, sober, smashed—sliding in and out of each other’s lives. While these connections can be tenuous, made through shared locations, like San Francisco’s W Hotel, rather than personal relationships, they allow characters’ histories to be unveiled over multiple stories. Alex, a young doctor featured in the leadoff, “Stayin’ Alive,” cameos in nearly all of the tales, and it is in these brief appearances that she is most believable. Likewise, Weasel, a junkie and former boxer first seen as Alex’s patient in “Stayin’ Alive,” flexes his muscles in “Hit Me,” one of the volume’s strongest efforts, where he falls for the social worker handling his case, Ruthie, while trying to straighten out his life. Throughout, Beach-Ferrara concentrates on creating rich character backstories. While the collection can be uneven, with stories like “Custody Bus” lingering too long on the past and lacking momentum, “Monkey,” with its aging, retired protagonist mourning his dead lover and fumbling his way through courtship, delivers emotional resonance in a frank look at the fragility of normalcy. Agent: Susan Ramer, Don Congdon Associates. (June)