We can survive the loss of our loved ones.All families live through challenges that can boobytrap any relationship. These stories show how faith in yourself and your family will save you.We see:Gladys, who strikes out for a new home before her husband is ready.Jerry, who ignored his cousin's cry for help, leading to her devastation.Edna and Gordon, old enough to bicker, but still young enough to love.Peter, who drank away his wife and son, then found salvation in his stupor.Nancy and her husband, who cruise to a surprising destination.Maddie, the prostitute who treasures her daughter more than herself.Ben and Marlene, the couple who desperately want a child.And Cathy, the child who returns to her mother.Live with them in their stages of grief. Survive through the sounds of the season.These 12 stories depict the ongoing development of long-term connections. Some portray need, others, rejection. And many, reconciliation. Each explores the profoundest of themes in a poignant meditation on families in love and in loss. You'll see yourself and your loved ones in these tales.The author of Though We Have No Merits focuses his empathetic view on the development and occasional dissolution of long-term relationships among immediate and extended families. In these 12 stories, ranging from the readily recognizable, to the unfamiliar, to the sometimes shocking, Dick Carmel reminds us why people come together and sometimes come to part. He provides a deeply poignant meditation on the nature of love and loss in each of these simple explorations of the profoundest of themes. Each is a story of families in their own stages of love and loss.