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"   Photo: Counterpoint  In her outstanding new collection of short stories, Marry or Burn, Valerie Trueblood uses the threads of familiar topics\u2014love, marriage, separation, general angst\u2014to spin affecting, utterly unexpected yarns. There are first dates, broken hearts, unlooked-for affairs, and of course weddings (brides and grooms figure prominently in five of the 12 stories)\u2014but Trueblood has completely rewritten the script for each of these everyday events. People who cheat on their spouses or lose their first loves or their firstborn share these truths with their children\u2014not in dramatic confessionals, but in the manner of parents passing along family history. A married woman finds herself fantasizing about her friend&amp;#039;s husband\u2014a charismatic, generous man who&amp;#039;s dying from lymphoma. A disastrous affair between a teenager and her now-institutionalized history teacher&amp;#039;s related to us from the perspective of the girl&amp;#039;s aunt. A divorced doctor, while recovering from the recent death of his tempestuous lover, accidentally catches his ex-wife&amp;#039;s boyfriend with another woman. As in life, even minor characters in these stories carry their own crucial emotional baggage. Trueblood, a master of pacing who is in her sixties, understands the intrinsic muddle of relationships and the essential imperfection of love\u2014but she also respects our cultural hope for romantic happiness. While ties are brutally severed and lovers die early, her characters continue to marry and move on, like this alcoholic widow trying desperately to keep things together at her daughter&amp;#039;s wedding: &amp;quot;Her eyes, in which her daughter has put soothing drops, blaze the blue of her dress, her feet clench in the new shoes, she vows, as at her own wedding, eternal beginning.&amp;quot; Marry or Burn will be released through Counterpoint Books on November 9. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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