Love... and Other Diversions

Ruth McMurry is an as-yet unpublished author, having apparently found it difficult to write in the current idiom, however graceful, engaging, and moving you may find her stories to be. She has three grown ‘children’ and has out-lived two husbands, thus having had experience with love and its many diversions--and manifestations. She lives in a retirement community near Philadelphia, and has written in a sporadic fashion since childhood--industriously in the last several decades. As a member of several writers’ groups she has found the stimulation with other writers an essential component in dealing with the solitary, unnerving experience that is the writing of fiction.
There are 34 stories in this collection ranging in length from six pages to more than 30. As to their location in time, they range from medieval to the present, though mostly the latter. As to place--mostly this modern, urban America. Only one is in any way autobiographical; two were inspired by newspaper headlines, and the remainder have bubbled up from a bruising encounter with love and its manifestations. There are a few happy endings and several in which despicable behavior gets its just reward. The writing is direct, unambiguous, and frequently deeply moving. There is little requirement for a suspension of disbelief.