7pm Tuesday, August 3

Santa Fe Author Tom Ireland’s The Man Who Gave His Wife Away

“Humanrelationships are the tragic necessity of human life," wrote Willa Cather.She wasn't just kidding, and Tom Ireland will discuss & sign his new essaycollection The Man Who Gave His Wife Away,which explores exactly what Cather meant. The perpetual conflict between ourneed for others and our need to be alone underlies each of the first-personessays in this collection, which voice the difficulties, satisfactions, andabsurdities of finding one's way in the social wilderness. The author takes asentimental journey to New York, his hometown, remembered from a safe distance;and visits faraway places like Oaxaca, Mexico, where he talks about love andfidelity with the ghost of his dead friend; and northern Thailand, where hebroods over his lack of a girlfriend and encounters "the man" of thetitle. Back home, he and his girlfriend lie awake at night and talk about theweightier implications of their love: whose vacuum cleaner will they keep whenthey live together?

Ireland’swork has been called "delightfully idiosyncratic and universallyhuman" (Publishers Weekly), and he is also the author of Mostly Mules, a travel journal withphotos; Birds of Sorrow: Notes from aRiver Junction in Northern New Mexico; and Our Love Is Like A Cake, true-life romance in post-Soviet Poland.He was awarded a literary fellowship from the National Endowment for the Artsand the Jeffrey E. Smith award in nonfiction from The Missouri Review. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico,where he edits archaeology and rides bikes.