Love Is No Small Thing

Meghan Kenny's debut collection, Love Is No Small Thing, gives readers an assembly of keenly drawn characters each navigating the world looking for an understanding of love in its many forms and complexitiesbe it romantic, parental, elusive, or eternal. A father may teach his teenage son "Hearts break easy," but as Kenny's characters discover, knowing an important truth about love is no substitute for experiencing it.

In the title story, a woman learns of her boyfriend's infidelity on Halloween night and contemplates lost years, concealments, and the difficulty of walking away. An Idaho cameraman and his cross-dressing, sky-diving son try to find common ground in "All These Lovely Boys." A first date at the Corkscrew Swamp Bird Sanctuary becomes something else altogether in "Sanctuary," and in "Heartbreak Hotel," a father swaps stories of disappointments and losses with his daughter and an unwanted passenger on a cross-country road trip. Throughout this...