Eros and Order: Love That Creates and Destroys explores the fragile boundary between love and control through literary stories of marriage, obsession, rescue, crime, immigration, and moral consequence. What drew you to the idea of examining love as a creative and destructive force?

Actually, the only story written specifically for this collection is “No Good Deed.” All the others had their independent inspirations, with three of them—“Perfect Girl,” “I Am Zico,” and “The Story of Aunt Jenny”—being derived from actual events. The unity of the collection occurred to me later as I began to assemble the collection from stories I had previously written. Then, finally seeing that the unity of the stories consisted of love’s changeable nature, I wrote “No Good Deed” as a commentary on that theme. The story’s character, Nora, has experienced a lack of normal parental love and, to compensate, has retreated from life into a Gothic cult. She has become so distrustful of what most of us regard as normal life—and love—that she hesitates to recognize it, let alone accept it, when it materializes in the character Ronnie, who is attempting to save her from herself.

The title story has a strong classical sensibility, with ideas of vows, order, betrayal, and consequence. How did classical themes influence the collection?​

The ancient Greeks had a keen sense of order, which we shared in a Christianized version from the Middle Ages until it was shattered by the horrors of World War I. The Greeks also recognized that erotic love could, if allowed, challenge and even destroy that order in individuals, even if done unintentionally. Consider the myth of Oedipus, who kills his father and marries his mother, without recognizing their true identities. Nevertheless, a plague descends on Thebes, the city Oedipus rules. And to lift that plague, the double sins that Oedipus has committed must be expiated, which he accomplishes by blinding himself.

Collectively, the stories in Eros and Order deal with violations of natural order: a woman who deserts her husband and young children in the title story, a father who imposes unnatural restrictions on his daughter in “Perfect Girl,” a girl who grows up without parental love in “No Good Deed.” Once the natural order is broken, it must be restored. The fact that the rebalancing does not occur immediately may deceive us into believing that we can escape it, but just as Sandra Patterson eventually learns in “Eros and Order,” we cannot.

A wonderful source for studying the evolutionary history of love in Western culture is C. S. Lewis’s The Allegory of Love (1936).

Several stories explore the danger of confusing love with ownership, rescue, or control. Was there a particular moral question you wanted readers to wrestle with?​

Yes, just what constitutes a beneficial, healthy relationship that we can recognize as love? The answer waits at the end of the collection in “The Story of Aunt Jenny,” a folktale about the Underground Railroad in the Mid-Ohio Valley of what became the state of West Virginia. Aunt Jenny risks her own freedom to help other escaped slaves, for West Virginia was still part of Virginia and therefore the Confederacy during most of her lifetime. Her actions are in sharp contrast to those of Sandra Patterson in the story that opens the collection. Sandra seeks complete personal freedom and so abandons her responsibilities to her husband and children. Aunt Jenny risks her personal freedom to help others achieve it.

Ruggiero Bellafatezza, the crime boss father of Serena in “Perfect Girl,” very well illustrates the dangers of attempting to control others as he imposes unnatural restrictions on his daughter’s romantic life for the benefit of his criminal activity by pledging her in marriage to his underboss, Ricky Lanza. Serena rebels by having a different beau for each day of the week in order to flaunt her independence until tragedy results.

“No Good Deed” offers hope while still questioning whether love can truly save someone. What do you think love can realistically offer people in moments of despair?​

Well, if nothing else, the collection shows that love has a variable and elusive character, but it can be decisive in saving someone. In “No Good Deed,” Ronnie attempts to do just that for Nora, whom he has just met, despite warnings from his coworkers and quite strongly from Nora herself that he shouldn’t. But he emphasizes to her that to lift herself out of a life that at times has involved homelessness, she must create a change in herself; he can only help her do that. Thus, at the story’s resolution, Nora must decide whether she will try to change, with Ronnie’s help, or remain in her adopted family—a Goth tribal cult. Thus, for love to succeed, it must involve a commitment by both participants.