The correspondence shared by Emily Wilson and Jason Blake describes two lives that interlaced over a period of a decade. In the beginning, Emily and Jason were close friends, university students who enjoyed sharing ideas. The catalyst that took their relationship from a bond of friendship to that of love was Jason’s emotional collapse, which resulted in Jason’s quitting his job and migrating with his young family to Colorado to continue his studies in the serenity of a small college town. That was when the correspondence began. It ended ten years later when Emily met the man she would marry. It was then that she returned the letters that Jason had written to her, letters he believed no longer existed.

Thirty years later Jason came upon the letters and decided to combine them into a single volume. Initially his motivation was to revisit the past that had for years existed only as fragments of memory tinged with sadness. The reader is invited to share Jason’s journey back to what was the most emotionally turbulent period of his life. What the reader will discover is a love story about two people who sought the curative power of love. Both Emily and Jason suffered episodes of mental illness that deepened their relationship. It would be wrong, however, to consider their love unnatural or unwholesome. It wasn’t. It was a desperate love, a bulwark against the assaults of mental illness.

What the letters reveal is that love is the most complex, mysterious, and inclusive of all emotions. Like the colors of light, the forms of love are infinite. Even more than the intellect, love is humanity’s most transformational subjective endowment. The intellect reveals; love comforts, vitalizes, and enchants.