The Capricious Rhythms of Love

The summer of ’46. Rural Vermont. The war not yet a year over. So many deaths still fresh among the living.

Finn Byrne, prominent battlefield photographer for Life magazine, has come to the Green Mountains to work on his book of famous combat photographs. Out hiking, he winds up injured and lost in the woods.

Dr. Louisa Freeman, local physician and descendent of slaves who arrived in Vermont via the Underground Railroad, finds Mr. Byrne and helps him to safety.

The Capricious Rhythms of Love is their story. It is not love at first sight.

So much separates them.

What a pleasure to write an old-fashion love story. A crisp, bright, classic, three-act love story. A meeting. A romance. A resolution. No idea why it took me so long. Or maybe I’ve been writing love stories all along and was just too bullheaded to recognize it. Stumbling over myself in the dark. Too bleary-eyed to see straight. Too high and mighty to admit it all comes down to love.

Finn Byrne is not a country boy. He’s New York City born and bred. Manhattan. Hell’s Kitchen. For the past dozen years, he’s been in Europe shooting wars-Cyprus, Spain, Italy, France, Belgium, Germany-for the Associated Press, NY Times, Life magazine.

Louisa Freeman is 100% Vermont born and bred. A high-spirited Green Mountain country girl through and through. Louisa comes to Finn’s rescue up on that secluded ridge trail and their lives spin away in unexpected directions.

She’s rural. He’s urban. She’s college educated. He’s a high school dropout. She’s emotionally devastated and only once beyond the borders of Vermont. Finn is a citizen of the world but adrift, disconnected. Louisa’s a homebody. Finn has no home. She’s grounded. He’s filled with wanderlust. One a woman and one a man. One black, one white.

And both, in their own way, broken.

Can the wide abyss separating them be crossed? Can love, true love, triumph?

The Capricious Rhythms of Love runs about 70,000 words. It is third-person narrative told from Finn’s and Louisa’s points of view. We hear not only what they say but we know well what they think, even if at times they are highly confused and uncertain.