Marrying Friends

When her troubled husband dies unexpectedly, mercurial Therese gets tangled in competing desires and demands — her own and those of her friends and family on Long Island. Ambitious in scope yet carefully observed, Marrying Friends deftly illuminates multiple characters as grief forces them to reimagine their lives and relationships. A frank and often wry look at the bewildering bonds between women, men, siblings, parents, and children, this novel-in-stories confirms Rechner's talent for capturing how we find meaning not only in our dreams, but also in our desperations.

"Marrying Friends solidifies Mary Rechner's place among the short story masters. Told with depth, grace, and intricacy, this novel-in-stories brings us in contact with the most intimate sides of humanity: the hidden hopes, intentions, and dreams that unite and confound us. These fallible and often funny characters have staying power — and Rechner employs a merciless precision to each line. Heartbreaking and redeeming, Marrying Friends is for anyone who's tried at this thing called life, fallen and gotten back up again. I will forever rush to read anything Mary Rechner writes." Chelsea Bieker, author of Godshot and Heartbroke

"No one ever changes. Yet no one ever stays the same. In this beautiful, knowing suite of linked stories, Mary Rechner conjures a group of wayward friends and relatives whose youthful loves and betrayals never faded away, and thus whose midlife encounters become rife with unfinished romance and ever-escalating emotional damage. Kind of like The Big Chill as imagined by Anton Chekov, Marrying Friends is a funny, poignant, suppley-crafted meditation on how the bells of childhood continue ringing throughout a shared life — a gorgeous, attentive collection to be savored by anyone with a friend." Jon Raymond, author of Denial

"Beginning with a death, the Long Island community in Marrying Friends is rebuilt around the loss. Relationships are reshuffled, family goes missing, children arrive, financial and creative lives are disrupted, lovers are scorned and reunited. Everyone does their messy best, which, lucky for us, isn't so great. Rechner extends an invitation to trust the mystery. She extends a hand and says, don't worry, we will make it through." Natalie Serber, author of Shout Her Lovely Name

"In the tradition of Thornton Wilder's classic play Our Town, Rechner's narrators — mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, lovers, and children — brilliantly weave a kaleidoscope of disparate voices into a subtle web that bursts with life — in all its beauty, mystery, and tragedy." Lee Montgomery, author of Whose World Is This?

Mary Rechner is the author of Nine Simple Patterns for Complicated Women, named to the long list for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, and the novella The Opposite of Wow, published in the Hong Kong Review. Her fiction has appeared in publications such as New Letters, Harvard Review, Gettysburg Review, New England Review, Kenyon Review, and Washington Square. Her criticism and essays have appeared in Litro, The Believer, Oregon Humanities, and the Oregonian. A recipient of fellowships from Literary Arts and the Regional Arts and Culture Council, as well as residencies from Caldera and the Vermont Studio Center, Rechner taught fiction writing at Portland State University and the University of Portland and now teaches media arts to high school students.