Amor Eterno: Eleven Lessons in Love

Following the author's two previous collections, El Milagro and Days of Plenty, Days of Want, and written in the bilingual idiom of the Southwest, this is a volume of 11 charmingly simple, imagistic stories about several varieties of love: the desperate love of a mother for her son away at war; the love that refuses to fight when a relationship is abused but that takes a delicate revenge; the aching of young loves separated by time and distance; the love of a woman who writes letters to her long-dead husband; the loving prayers of old women for the characters of a telenovela whose lives seem so turbulent. There is a sweet (not saccharine) depth of feeling here, matched by the author's depth of cultural wisdom. Bits of regional lore are sprinkled throughout--like the very precise instructions for making a petition to a local saint (actually a young lover killed by a jealous husband a century before) or the recipe for a lovers' breath freshener. Poems, letters, promesas left on altars and verses of songs are interwoven with the stories to create an earthy yet innocent celebration of romantic longing. (Mar.)