Ture Love: Stories

To explore the topic of love, Fulghum (From Beginning to End) solicited personal stories from ""hundreds and hundreds"" of people of all ages and walks of life. The stories assembled here can be touching, even compelling. One tells of the old man who paints his wife's toenails after she is too old to bend down easily to do it herself because, he says, ""I love you and I want you to feel beautiful as long as you live""; one speaks of the young man who learns about women and love from the retired college professor who tutors him on the works of D.H. Lawrence; another celebrates the couple with two children who have stayed together through 12 years of alcoholism and 15 years of recovery. Other stories describe pleasant first meetings or reunions, and still others detail fleeting encounters that never blossom into a relationship at all. Some of this seems more about ego or fantasy than love; as one wise teenager states, ""Love is 3/4 dream and 1/4 reality."" Fulghum punctuates the stories with the down-to-earth wisdom his readers have come to expect from him and donates his own true-love memory as well-of falling in love 40 years ago while working as a cowboy in Colorado. ""With the excuse of doing research for this book,"" he confesses, ""I hired a private detective to find my long-lost love."" The sleuth found the woman ""in four hours,"" and Fulghum wrote to her. ""She hasn't written back,"" but ""the cowboy is polishing his boots and combing his hair just in case."" Is this book a perfect Valentine's Day gift, or what? $225,000 ad/promo; simultaneous HarperAudio; author tour. FYI: Fulghum is donating his net royalties from True Love to Habitat for Humanity.