Showcasing the intensity and perception of a truly gifted writer, this collection of stories by the author of the number-one New York Times best-seller The Memory Keeper's Daughter transports us to exotic locations as it follows the lives of those on the fringes of society: a fire-eater, an American and his Korean war bride, a juggler and a trapeze artist, and a cleaning woman whose life is interwoven with Marie Curie's. Each must confront, in dramatically differing ways, the barriers of time, place, and circumstance in that most universal of human experiences: the quest to discover, and understand, the elusive mysteries of love.