love and identity

More about the story

To be human is to tell ourselves stories about who we are, where we’ve been, and where we’re going. But how often do we get it right? Why do we miss so much, and what are the consequences of those omissions?

These questions shape the narrative in A Kind of Love, which examines what happens when a person with thin boundaries begins to doubt her love for her husband. This personal drama takes place against the larger backdrop of a 19th-century community losing its children and a 21st-century living history site finding its voice.

Good historical interpreters help us look at what came before to understand what’s going on now. The interpreters in my novel want truth to come to light. They know that behaving as though truth matters is a way of loving, and they want love to win.

It’s a tall order. An impossible one. Except love doesn’t have to be perfect to be healing. And even a sliver of light can find its way into the darkness of our American history and illuminate faces we haven’t seen and awaken voices we haven’t heard—beautiful faces, powerful voices.

I’m telling this story to explore the nature and elasticity of human love—how it can make us stumble or pick us up and carry us home. I am asking: Who are you, America, really? Did I fall in love with you, or with the country I thought you were? And what do I do with that now?