A Love Story in Three Parts
By Hannah Seevers
Genre: Romance, Literary Fiction
Synopsis:
Justine Holland is living quite a normal life (thank you
very much). She's a successful artist, upper middle class, pregnant with baby
number one, and twenty-seven. But her cozy life is turned on its head when her
husband, Sean, finally realizes what everyone else already has- he's actually
in love with his best college mate, Gabriel. Even though everyone says she's
nuts, Justine decides that having the enigmatic Czech man around might not be
such a bad idea. Who knows? All she does know is that losing either of them
isn't an option. Break all the rules, shatter all the traditions. Will it be
perfect? Or a perfect disaster...
Character Spotlight: Justine Holland
Polyamory (from Greek πολύ [poly], meaning "many"
or "several", and Latin amor, "love") is the practice,
desire, or acceptance of having more than one intimate relationship at a time
with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved.
Dear Reader,
I don’t expect you to understand my choices. I've spent a
very long time with this book- the two years its taken me to write it and the
five years the book itself covers- and every day I have tried to come up with a
clear reason for you, my reader. A reason why I chose the life and path I did.
For a while, I thought fear had motivated me. I feared
losing Sean and being alone, so maybe I grabbed onto the one thing that would
keep him with me. Half of Sean's heart would be better than none, I could
reason. Then I realized that I still had every bit of him I'd ever had before
and I developed a theory of complacency which paradoxically had moved events
along. I couldn't fathom life without him, so somehow polyamory was a lesser
evil.
Continuing onward, I blamed my hippie commune upbringing and
thought it might have stunted the monogamy reflex that everyone around me
seemed to possess. Sometimes I linger on divine intervention. Usually after
these moments I wake up with a blistering hangover.
So, yes, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I chose a very
non-traditional relationship and have no explanations for you.
But before you start thinking things about
polyamory (which is a five dollar word I think Gabriel made up, but he proved
me wrong via google), we humbly implore you to remove from your mind the image
of an old man and his twelve teenage wives dressed in long, calico dresses at
their fundamentalist ranch. Also kindly forget harems; none of us are running
around in see through Princess Jasmine pants with bells on our ankles, although
if Vogue pronounced it stylish Sean would happily. We also aren't swingers.
There's no house keys in a bowl style casual hook ups and we don't frequent nudist resorts, although that
might be fun- the naked, not the random sex. We've never marched in a Pride
parade, even though they're fun, and we don't live in Portland or San
Francisco.
But we do this: we cook dinner for each other, watch movies,
play Scrabble, go to the grocery store and even go to the Olive Garden upon
occasion. We have real jobs and get our hair cut. We bitch about traffic, drink
too much, question our decisions and forget to pick up the dry cleaning.
Even though I can't give you a reason, at least not the
tidy, clean one sentence explanation you probably want, I can tell you the
words that ran through my head every day, and still does:
Love is not a finite resource.
I can tell you what I did and you can try to decipher my
true motivations if you'd like. Anyway, take out story and absorb it. See us as
people. Forget about trying to understand unless you read James Joyce for fun.
The themes are universal and I'll give you a hint. One of them might be “’’’’if
you can't beat 'em, join 'em”.
Justine May 7, 2014
PS, Sean and Gabriel are bitching at me to say
that they helped me write the introduction. So, there. Consider these two
ill-mannered man children to be contributors. I love them.
An author who blurs lines and pushes envelopes. Hannah hails from Southeastern Indiana, but considers Austin, TX and South Korea home. When she's not saving the world, the author's strapping husband lives with her and their redheaded wondertwins. A Love Story in Three Parts is her first published novel.
Twitter: @hannahseevers
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Hannah-Seevers
