Five wayward love stories.

What is it we seek in another's flesh—wholeness, transcendence, possession, escape? Can we trust the body's primal intelligence or is lust the fatal trap depicted in classic operas and Victorian novels?

In "Rescue Mission" a divorced middle-aged man journeys to a desolate outpost in Africa to win back a childhood sweetheart more interested in apes than in men

"Wars of the Flesh" follows the misadventures of a rebellious Swiss teenager who elopes with a penniless artist and follows him back to his devastated homeland in the wake of the Spanish Civil War.

"Counter-Indications of Trance on the Male Libido" invites the reader to eavesdrop on a hypnotherapy session turned seduction.

"The Guru's Mistress" lays bare the curious morality of a woman-child whose obsessive love for a guru endures celebrity, betrayal, and marriage to another man.

In "The Open Green Mouth" a woman desperate to conceive a child accompanies her hunter husband to guerilla-occupied Putumayo, where the laws of the jungle conspire to fulfill her desire.

We may love imperfectly, we may love blindly, but love we must.