Things Beloved
"The Better Boat"
Wandering the coast, 12-year-old Anthony comes upon a man kicking a sailboat. The derelict boat is stranded high on the shore, so the man sells it to Anthony for a dollar. In an idyllic Rhode Island summer, Anthony falls in love with sailing and gradually learns how to do it. He mostly learns by making mistakes, many of which are pointed out by Teresa, his know-it-all cousin visiting from the landlocked Midwest. Aurora, the dollar boat, turns out to have an astonishing and emotionally complex history, one that chronicles loves and losses far greater than that of a boy for his beloved sailboat.
"The Observatory"
The impending sell-off of an obsolete telescope gathers five middle-aged friends back at their college's astronomical observatory. Trespassing, the gaze at the moon through the lenses and argue about whether Pluto is a planet until their nostalgia is interrupted by a stranger outside the dome. They discover the the dome and its telescope have already been sold to this shadowy financier. His intention is to bulldoze the entire site. But he offers the former astronomy students a diabolical deal to save it.
"Navigation"
Lewis has absolutely no sense of direction. Truly he is so pathologically geographically challenged that he needs to use curious self-drawn maps to keep from getting lost in even familiar places. So, naturally, he is a graduate student studying the mathematics of GPS systems. Getting lost on campus he meets and falls in love with Robin, an ornithologist studying how migratory birds navigate. They decide to take a romantic trip together to Venice, where Lewis' sister is working. Venice is, of course, the place where everyone gets lost. In Venice, Robin suddenly disappears, and Lewis, who can't find anything, must find her. Lewis knows that Robin hasn't left him by choice. Drawing on his love for her and a rogues' gallery of informants, he unravels the bizarre events of her vanishing to find Robin once again.
"Frogs"
Danielle is an exemplary elementary school teacher. Her husband loves her and her commitment to her students. She has launched a semester-long classroom project of observing tadpoles turn into frogs. Meanwhile, she is undergoing her own metamorphosis; she is in the early stages of pregnancy. In order to get pregnant she had to discontinue a medication that might have otherwise harmed her unborn child. The medication prevented episodes of a chronic condition. When she begins to have incidents in the classroom, she and her husband must confront the question of whether continuing teaching is possible or desirable, and each must make a decision.
"Vacation"
Thomas is a theologian who has just published a proof of the existence of God, referencing recent scientific theories. His wife Grace proposes that this is a great time for them to take a vacation, riding mules down the steep trail into the Grand Canyon. When they arrive, their reservations for this trek are lost and their mules given to others. To their rescue comes a mysterious seven-foot-tall man who brings them good news. He mounts them on mules that officially don't exist and leads the couple on an exclusive tour down the trail into the canyon. Thomas, the theologian, is increasingly aware of the spooky nature of time along this route. Halfway down the canyon trail their seven-foot guide predicts to Thomas a terrible accident that will befall their troubled adult son Rafe, a tragedy that Thomas knows will crush his beloved wife Grace. Thomas realizes the seven-foot man (who may or may not be an angel) has the power to turn aside this tragedy. But Thomas must, like Jacob, wrestle with the angel to receive this blessing.
"Mr. Coe's Garden"
Curtis, a teenager, is hired by the very elderly and very quirky Mr. Coe for a mysterious summer job: transforming Mr. Coe's entire back lawn to an enormous, carefully structured flower garden. Mr. Coe tells Curtis that the garden is a love gift for his wife, the strangely absent Mrs. Coe. Buried in the center of the garden is a time capsule recording the Coe's love for each other at a moment when they thought they would perish. Now, decades later, Curtis wonders whether Mrs. Coe is still alive, and if not, why Mr. Coe continues to speak of her in the present tense. And why is the garden they're building so huge?
Vacation and Other Tales of Enduring Love
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