An epic study in the varieties of love from one of America's greatest story-weavers. Falling back in love with your first wife while married to your fifth was a sticky, stupid business. Jack Mause simply feels too much. A builder sparring with bankruptcy, he finds that the women in his life accuse him of being emotionally barren, too. Yet this is a man who makes love in a convent, frightens a nun right to death and lets the pretty young stranger he has just married walk off alone into a blizzard. Jack has a very rich history. And he has a secret. His secret is that he forgets to disclose that history in full to those who should hear it: his marriages crack on what he conceals. Bu he marries again, and again, hope and desire rising in him anew - he tries to get it right, one last time, before a fire consumes all hopes, all desire. His women swirl about in his wake, disoriented, stormy and changed. They are becalmed by the realization that they each married a different Jack Mauser, contrived a different history. Marooned, frozen, in a snow-bound car, and in order to survive, Jack's wifes find themselves telling each other a last of the secret history each shares with him - stories that revive, warming tales of burning love.