Glenda Burgess

READ AN EXCERPT from the Prolgoue, THE GEOGRAPHY OF LOVE

Physicists say we are made of stardust. Intergalactic debris and far-flung atoms, shards of carbon nanomatter rounded up by gravity to circle the sun. As atoms pass through an eternal revolving door of possible form, energy and mass dance in fluid relationship. We are stardust, we are man, we are thought. We are story.

“It’s always a story, my girl,” my father told me one summer evening when I was young. “Falling stars, rings in a tree trunk, the river as it swells by, all stories.”

We were camping in the wilderness north of Vancouver, Washington, along the pebble shoals of the Lewis River. It was an hour after sunset, and the sky was deepening to an inky lavender at the edge of the black canopy of trees. We crouched beside the water, washing up after a quick dinner of cowboy stew. I asked him what made stars shoot. At nine years old, I was ready for real explanations, heavy truth, clues and answers to bigger mysteries than long division. My father had studied physics as a young man. I knew he would take my question seriously.

He reached behind him to loosen a flat river stone and skipped it out across the burbling rapids. Please, I begged silently, tell me the truth. I knew with deep inner conviction that the way my father answered my question would somehow affect the way I asked and answered questions the rest of my life.

He tossed out another stone as he considered the darkening sky.

“Just a bit of chance and chaos, Sunshine,” he said. “Atoms that dance.”

I think back to that long ago conversation as I ponder the effects of luck and disaster on the human heart. A child then, I had no real awareness of human fragility, but I absolutely knew shooting stars pirouetted across the universe. Life, my search for truth, seemed dusted by a dash of magic.

Only now in the wake of fortune, do I truly understand.

"I read Glenda Burgess' poignant and harrowing memoir in one sitting-in one breath-and all I had ever felt about love's ability to vanquish everything, to swallow heartbreak, to correct history, Burgess makes us believe. And in a fashion that reads like a classic novel." -Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of The Deep End of the Ocean

Glenda Burgess was in her early thirties when she fell head over heels in love with Kenneth, a twice-widowed man fourteen years her senior with a troubled teenaged daughter. Ken's first wife died in a car crash; years later, his second wife was murdered in their home. Considered the prime suspect, Kenneth was living under a shadow of suspicion. But for Glenda, who believed in her instincts, and Ken, who found the resilience to take yet another chance on happiness, only one thing mattered: their love. It is a grand love that buoys them through fifteen magical years of marriage, two kids, and ultimately, Ken's battle with lung cancer.

THE GEOGRAPHY OF LOVE is Glenda's remarkable tribute to the commitment, love, and trust that bound husband and wife together despite the shadows of the past and the uncertainties of the future. It is a profound exploration of the human heart and an inspiring journey into a relationsip defined by resilience, passion, trust, and courage.

THE GEOGRAPHY OF LOVE reminds us that love is always a leap of faith--and beautifully illustrates why we take it.

"This generous book, both primer and elegy, chronicles a courageous woman’s journey forward into love’s complexities…and long after I’ve closed the book, convinced me to embrace and savor wholly each day, each moment, each love, before they, too, are gone." -- Katrina Roberts, author of The Quick, and Friendly Fire, Idaho Prize for Poetry

"...startling, memorable, and deeply moving. With gentle, deliberate strokes...increasingly engrossing... Burgess's journey possesses bravery and open-eyed clarity." - Publishers Weekly