The Book of Romance

This volume gathers a tapestry of romance tales that have traveled across continents and centuries. Edited with care and illustrated throughout, the collection shows how familiar plots—like Cinderella or the Orpheus legend—reappear in the oral traditions of distant peoples. The introductory essay treats these stories as adult fairy tales, tracing their migrations from ancient Greece to the farms of New Mexico, the plains of the Red Indians, and the cotton fields of the American South. Listeners will hear universal longing, daring quests, and bittersweet love that bind these narratives together.

Among the selections is a haunting adaptation of the Orpheus myth set on a Southern plantation, where a fiddler’s music can stir the earth and his beloved’s fate hangs on a single forbidden act. Other chapters present a Zuni version of Cinderella that flips the classic triumph, and a Samoyed tale that blends icy landscapes with timeless moral choices. Each story is offered in its original flavor, letting listeners sense the cultural colour that shapes each retelling while recognizing the shared human heart at its core.