LOVE IN THE PRESENT TENSE is the story of Mitch, Leonard and Pearl. Mitch is a young unmarried owner of a web design service, who’s having an affair with a married, much older woman, the mayor’s wife. Pearl is a half black, half Korean teenage single mother who lives next door. She came up from L.A. with her young son Leonard a few years after killing his father, a police officer, minutes after the baby was conceived. Leonard is a precocious 5-year-old mixed race child, with asthma and a serious eye condition, who makes friends with Mitch from the upstairs window. Their lives collide when Pearl leaves Leonard at Mitch’s house and never comes back. The reader knows what Mitch and Leonard initially don’t—Pearl died that night. Leonard knows instinctively. He sees Pearl in candle flames and little sparrows. Mitch assumes Pearl dropped the kid on his doorstep and took a powder. But they grow up together, even though Mitch must eventually surrender Leonard to a two-parent adoption home. Still, their bond as parent and child—though shifting—endures, teaching Mitch the concept of “forever love.” Now Mitch’s dilemma is to keep the teenage Leonard from flirting with mortal danger as a way of following his beloved mother into the beyond. In the end Leonard is able to answer the questions about his mother’s death and his own background, and to get a look at his classic childhood “bogeyman,” who turns out to be nothing more than a flawed human being. |
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"Hyde tells a rich and engaging story through the voices of three very extraordinary people." Hyde excels in sentimental, utopian storytelling, and though it isn't as sharp a hook as "paying it forward," her story of a love that transcends time, place and human weakness is a worthy successor." Each of the protagonists, Pearl, Leonard and Mitch, take turns telling their sides of the story, and as they age, the denouement is satisfyingly suspenseful. Sparked with humanity and a lively vernacular." |
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