Neil Connelly

Set years after tossed bouquets and tiered wedding cakes, these stories explore happy marriages, broken marriages, and those still hanging in the balance. A husband fleeing his wife finds refuge in a radio station's promotional stunt;  a divorced wedding photographer struggles to break free of her obsession with taking obscene pictures; on the night of Jewish atonement, a wife responds to her husband's adultery with a dangerous act of her own. All these characters and others in the collection declared the same vows, to have and to hold. Yet each takes a unique approach to coping with the inevitable difference all couples confront between the world we live in and the world which we were promised.

This delightful collection testifies to the transformative power in subtle redemption. Clever, discerning, finely-wrought, the stories here probe brokenness and healing, straying and stumbling in characters and worlds reminiscent of Raymond Carver. Here is what it means to come through something, here is what it means to find a lit room at the end of a dark corridor. --Lisa Graley, author of The Current That Carries, winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction

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You know from the first page that you're in the hands of a versatile and original talent, a ranging imagination. There is real darkness in these stories, real sorrow and anger and regret in the hearts of these characters, but there's also plenty of humor and no small amount of hope and more wisdom than one writer should be asked to bear.

--Michael Knight, author of The Typist