"A first-rate collection of novellas that will break your heart and fill you with hope at the same time." --Denver Rocky Mountain News In the tradition of William Faulkner and Gabriel Garcia Marquez comes Wives and Lovers, from the author the Boston Globe calls "One of the most expert and substantial of our writers." Requisite Kindness--published here for the first time--tells the story of a man who must comes to terms with a life of treating women badly when he goes to live with his sister and dying mother. Rare and Endangered Species demonstrates how a wife and mother's suicide reverberates in the small community where she lives, and affects the lives of people who don't even know her. Finally, Spirits is about the pain that men and women can--and do--inflict upon each other. Three very different stories that illuminate the unadorned core of love--not the showy, more celebrated sort, but what remains when the more ephemeral emotions such as lust, jealousy, and passion have been stripped away.