Casualties of Passion

"Casualties of Passion" is a story of relationships - relationships gone stale, relationships that never should have been, uncommon relationships that morph over time and endure, and relationships that erupt in violence. The common thread that runs through these relationships is sexual desire.

The narrative tells the story of five marriages.

The first is a loveless "open marriage" in which the wife, a lawyer, uses her body to please her clients in ways unrelated to their legal problems and enhance her professional success.

The second is a marriage that never should have been, in which the wife abandons her adoring husband to seek the sexual gratification she never found in his bed.

The third is an ostensibly successful marriage built on a shared secret regarding uncommon desires that would fracture many marriages.

The fourth is a marriage fraught with jealousy and rage that erupts in violent misplaced vengeance.

The fifth is a seemingly perfect "white picket fence" marriage in which the wife's past has given rise to a decade of repressed passion that her husband cannot satisfy.

"Casualties of Passions" follows the intersecting paths of the people who endure and/or exit these five flawed marriages, the choices they make along the way, the consequences of those choices, and the ultimate impact of their pursuit of passion on themselves and those around them. None of the principal characters in this story are saints. Some may appear, at first blush, to be the very antithesis of that. In their own ways, each is an imperfect and incomplete human being. Some are oblivious to their imperfections, some are comfortable with and revel in them, some struggle against them, others succumb to them, some evolve in ways that make them more likeable.