Damn Love

April 15, 2013
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.

April 1, 2013
Whether she's writing about gay or straight relationships, the dynamics of family ties or friendships, Beach-Ferrara's exploration of the numerous types of love are spot-on in her debut short story collection. Set primarily in San Francisco and North Carolina, she links the characters as many of them move in and out of each other's lives, dealing with common emotions and often complicated situations. In "Stayin' Alive," physician Alex struggles with the death of a relationship as thoughts of her deceased uncle, a drug addict who taught Alex to cuss and was instrumental in her success, play out in her mind. In "Different Paths, Same Woods" and "American Martyr," readers meet Ruth, a stoic, cancer-stricken mother caught between her husband's rejection of their gay son, Peter, and her need to reconcile. "Custody Bus" transports a divorced woman who has trysts with her ex-husband in various hotel rooms (where she works) back to her earlier days when children of divorced parents were forced every Friday to board a bus to comply with court-ordered visitations with noncustodial parents. On the eve of deploying to Fallujah with her National Guard unit, Keisha, a Durham police officer in "Love the Soldier," conducts one final stakeout and reflects upon her older brother's death, her failed marriage and the secret that she keeps from her pastor father and devout mother. Expressive and sincere, Beach-Ferrara's stories give voice to common, yet often uncomfortable, themes in society: same-sex love and issues of marriage, identity, religious beliefs, military service and intolerance. The author's success--she's a minister and LGBT rights advocate--lies in the simplicity of her style and the honesty of her words as she builds each story, one as fine as the next.

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