In Bitterness / Seven Stories, David Orsini explores the lives of characters that are tested as well as transformed or defeated by the loss of a spouse or by the loss of children and other relatives during a world war. Some of the characters are tested by the aftermath of a fatal air crash, by terminal illness, and by unrequited love. The troubled human beings who activate their journeys within these pages include war-haunted veterans, a young protagonist who has inadvertently caused the death of his best friend, and a world-weary engineer who enters an unorthodox sexual triangle. These stories often portray characters who make unwise and sometimes perverse choices and who struggle to move forward to a new cycle.