Sensitivity and passion illuminate the words and images of this lovely book. Chronicling the depth of feeling in a look, a touch, a kiss, the longing of an unconceived child to be born…softness and quiet become a meditation.

—Bill Kane, ARTIST, PETALUMA, CALIFORNIA

An elegant volume full of surprising rhyme and subtle eroticism... sweet, and unrelenting! A terrific bedside book, one to be turned to again and again.

—Rich Piellisch, August Pacific Press

A delightful book to awaken your senses... this book will reopen your heart to experience shameless, unadulterated love. The perfect read to arouse our hearts with romance and stumulate our minds transcendentally... pure, spiritual and inspirational... a sensitive and passionate love story. The illustrations are warm, luscious and vibrant, an ideal gift for a lover, a new bride, or simply anyone who has a flame in their heart.

—Rachel Dean, The Harrodsburg Herald

O, the stories these pastels and poems tell—the exhilarating highs of love, the painful lows, the passions and confusions! Stories filled with sensual abundance, deep reflection, and most delightfully— an earthy, robust sexuality. As the book opens, we hear the first notes of love’s melody—faint, sweet, enticing, becoming more clear as the heart awakens. Then we dance to the rhythms of love—the joys and sorrows that come as lovers play and work to blend two beats. Finally, we celebrate the harmonies of love and that sweet happily ever after that eventually comes to all of us. Together, these beautiful pastels and poems tell one story really—that big lifetime love story we all know so well. Go pick some fresh fruit, pour a glass of wine, enjoy!

—Athena Vittorio, PSYCHOLOGIST AND AUTHOR, ROME, ITALY

This is a book full to the spilling-over with love—not ideas about the thing but the thing itself—evoked and expressed in words and images that are sensual, tender, and witty all at the same time. Take this poetic moment from “A Moment with the Kittatiny” (page 19):

granite, ice coming, and the wind sheets
of this fruit shaking autumn day

tell me:
there are no dead things in this world.

rocks trickle down mountainsides and leaves
spiral to remind us of the pause

incessant in the rhythm of things;
circles of wind dry the sweat from the palm

of my hand outstretched as I turn to you
running down Appalachian corridors

of this one world, this one time.

There are no dead things in the world of this book—love makes everything come alive, as much in the fruit shaking autumn as in the lushness of summer, alive and bursting out with its exuberance and fecundity. Take the pastel that accompanies “To My Young Fig” (page 35). Here is a summer fruitfulness in every sense complementing the autumnal Kittatiny and offering its own response to the hand outstretched. The fig is as full of fruit and seed as the woman whose entrance to her fruit and seed the fig resembles. She is confidently and comfortably aware of this natural analogy and does not find it at all salacious, nor does the amused raven, who smiles proudly at the discovery of these resemblances. The curves of the hills and fields resemble the curves of the fruit-full woman and like her are governed in their cycles by the same celestial forces marked throughout the book by sunshine, moon slivers, and shooting stars. A rich world of the senses waiting to become even richer when man and woman meet, as they do on page after page in words and images.

You won’t get tired of turning the pages of this book over and over again, because the person who is tired of love is tired of life.

— William Vesterman, PhD, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, RUTGERS UNIVERSITY

This little treasure deserves a spot on anyone's self... a celebration of the oldest and most universal theme somehow comes off cliché-free, sans irony.

—Todd Mercer, Clarion Review

Simple and when read out loud, lends itself to meditation... an absolute delight! Style, imagery, passion — a great story and love poem all wrapped up in one beautiful package.

—Publishers Marketing Association Judge's Panel