Dear John, I Love Jane is a new anthology published by Seal Press. It’s a collection of essays by women who left their husbands to be with women. Mostly. A few stayed, working things out with lovers and spouses to have it both ways. Candace Walsh, one of the editors, asked me if I’d review it after I posted something about my girlfriend here last fall.
The book is eye-opening and delightful and candid. It’s also heart-wrenching: packed with stories of couples struggling to deal (or failing to deal) with one member’s fluid sexuality.
Candace herself left her husband a few years ago to embark on a lesbian life. Soon after she met Laura Andre, her partner and co-editor of this book. The book was born out of Candace’s desire to read stories by women like her, who could share the nuances of her experience. She suspected rightly that she was not alone.
What I love about this book is how complex and nuanced these stories are. They’re hopeful, sad, sweet, messy and brave, but never simple. There are no fairy tales here. No one meets her prince, marries him and lives happily ever after. Instead, these heroines run off with each other, leaving Prince Charming with the dream life and heading into uncharted waters. The women in Dear John, I Love Jane are grappling with inner changes that disrupt their marriages, their lives and their sense of self.
In Watershed, Veronica Masen falls in love with her dream girl but decides to stay in her sexless marriage with her husband. In A Door Opening Out, Susan Grier escapes from a bad marriage into a loving, supportive partnership with a woman who helps her claim her own heart. Audrey Bilger writes about the joy she has in getting to spend each day with her wife in Over The Fence. In Leap of Faith, Libbie Miller leaves her husband not for a specific woman, but for the certain knowledge that she can’t be married to a man anymore.
Each of these stories is unique, so different from the rest, yet each turns on a woman’s surprising realization later in life that she loves women. The coming out stories are like coming out stories at any age, in many ways. They write about remembering flirtations in middle school. They share secret desires and secret shame as they became aware that lesbians existed and their mothers did not approve. Like other anthologies of coming out stories, many of these writers share their delicious moments of discovery as they run their fingers through a lover’s hair for the first time or hook up online with a woman they’ll never meet in person.
Some parts blissful, some parts bittersweet, all of it achingly honest, Dear John, I Love Jane captures the hearts of these queer women writers. It might well capture yours as well with its fine essays and moving theme.
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