Bonds of Love and Blood: Short Stories
Twelve stories of wayward travelers. Twelve stamps on the passport of the soul.
Walter struggles to see past his disfigurement, but a trip to Thailand and a mysterious woman may challenge his quest for perfection. Married to a workaholic, Leslie is accustomed to solitude until her overbearing Indian mother-in-law turns her kitchen into a verbal battlefield. A woman looks for the perfect souvenir in the Turkish Bazaar and instead finds a passionate love affair. From ice storms in Maine to swimming pools in Vera Cruz, errant souls must grapple with past baggage to forge profound connections and a new sense of direction.
Bonds of Love & Blood is a poignant collection of prize-winning stories featuring life's unexpected arrivals and departures. If you like intimate accounts of lives at the crossroads, vibrant portrayals of global locales, and elegantly-crafted prose, then you'll love Marylee MacDonald's compelling tales of travel.
Buy Bonds of Love & Blood to embark on a heart-wrenching journey of love, loss, and redemption today!
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Exploring topics of personal authenticity, the need for solitude in which to grow, and the painful and confusing clash between diverse personalities and cultures, MacDonald applies insight, power, and delicacy to create characters between whom the psychic space virtually sizzles. FOREWORD REVIEWS
Readers walk the streets, farms, and countries of each of these twelve individuals and their circles and will find these very different journeys engrossing. MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW
With elegant prose enlivened by shards of mean humor, MacDonald captures how hard it is to love and/or trust abroad or at home. KIRKUS REVIEWS
Author Marylee MacDonald has done an absolutely masterful job of presenting her readers with short stories so beautifully written that the characters will stay in your mind long after the story, and indeed the book, is done. READERS' FAVORITE
In her collection of twelve brilliantly-written short stories, MacDonald explores the pain and beauty of human relationships. MacDonald's writing is raw and visceral, creating a strong emotional connection between her characters and the reader. US REVIEW OF BOOKS
Bonds of Love and Blood is brilliantly written and nothing less than emotive. HOLLYWOOD BOOK REVIEWS
Bonds of Love and Blood by Marylee MacDonald is poignant, honest, and compelling, as are all of these stories. Highly recommended. PACIFIC BOOK REVIEW
MacDonald dares to question which is the greater, more unsettling risk: the alluring intimacy of foreign terrains, or the intimate dangers of domesticity? TARA ISON, author of Reeling Through Life and Child Out of Alcatraz
Her characters remind us of our universal and contradictory longing for solitude and for connection. Savor this book. Enjoy being in the hands of a generous and visionary writer. EILEEN FAVORITE, author of The Heroines
These elegantly crafted stories brim with emotional wisdom and eloquence. Bearing you around the world, they will imprint themselves, deeply, indelibly, upon your heart. MELISSA PRITCHARD, author of Palmerino
In stories linked by themes of journey and displacement, each character is backed up "right against the precipice ... " ADRIA BERNARDI, author of Openwork and Dead Meander
Marylee MacDonald writes with wisdom and patience and dramatic power in presenting converging inward and outward journeys. At each turn, the imaginative storytelling guides you into the riddling hearts of people who appear to be out of options but become ready to learn to try again. KEVIN MCILVOY, author of Little Peg and The Fifth Station
Tight, interesting, and evocative, these are stories that surprise and delight. MOLLY GILES, author of Rough Translations and Creek Walk
"The Pancho Villa Coin" is an absorbing and troubling read. The story manages to soak the reader in a pleasingly foreign atmosphere while building a feeling of threat. MICHAEL SIGNORELLI, Judge, Faulkner-Wisdom Competition
People who avoid short fiction in favour of novels may complain that too much is left out or too much is compressed into a small space. MacDonald's savvy understanding of human relationships, and her lucid, vibrant, and ruggedly poetic prose, make for riveting stories you both can't put down and must pause at length between, imagining what came before and what comes next. RICHARD LEMM, Shape of Things to Come and Burning House
