Love Chains: Stories

Like the naked preacher in Margaret Blair Young's "Zoo Sounds" whose placard urges passersby to "repent in the raw, " Young peels away layers of pretense to reveal her characters' basic instincts. She writes about people who live hard lives, who face unseen demons, and who find themselves bound to individuals they do not really understand. In such stories as "God on Donahue" and "Dirge for Rosaidalva Aju, " she takes readers on pilgrimages to exotic places through a labyrinth of modern paradoxes.

In particular, Young discovers a basic, common faith in God's forgiveness, in religion at its bare-bones essence, coupled with the terror of personal change. She finds, however, that people enjoy simple pleasures and mostly want to be loved and trusted. She writes with an immediacy that will create for many readers a sense of deja vu, as if her voice has become their own.