These eleven arresting, comic, and moving stories by acclaimed writer Michael Parker testify to the driving force of love, the lengths to which we’ll go to claim it and pursue it, the delusions we’ll float to keep it going, the torment that goes part and parcel with it. And despite all of the above, the absolute necessity of it, no matter its consequences.

Whether it’s a college student undone by the boy who leaves her, or the boyfriend intent on leveling old scores from high school for his lover, or the husband who discovers—in the grocery store—the woman he should have been with all along, every character, no matter how off track, wants to believe in debt and credit and payback and making the messy world—and the messy world of love—turn out neatly.

In these funny, heartbreaking, and frighteningly perceptive stories, Michael Parker shows us, for better or worse, the mechanics of the male mind. The men here—no matter how culpable, deceptive, idealistic, dangerous, flirtatious, gullible, undecided, obsessed, callous, or illogically logical—trust in the power of love and in the women who reel them in or do their best to leave them behind.