“A novel of vivid emotional truths”
— The Globe and Mail
What constitutes love? What are its components? Is it more than the sum of its parts?
All former major league baseball player Zep Baker needs to put his life back on track is to revive his marriage, convincing his wife to return to Tampa with their daughter. But his wife won’t be easily swayed. Enter Hope, neuroscience researcher who he persuades to help him in this endeavour. The resulting life-experiment takes both characters to places they did not foresee and for which they are not prepared.
With his award-winning touch, Trevor Cole has written a novel of great compassion and depth, taking an innovative approach to the brain-versus-heart debate that has been the material for philosophers, poets, dramatists, and novelists for centuries.
All former major league baseball player Zep Baker needs to put his life back on track is to revive his marriage, convincing his wife to return to Tampa with their daughter. But his wife won’t be easily swayed. Enter Hope, neuroscience researcher who he persuades to help him in this endeavour. The resulting life-experiment takes both characters to places they did not foresee and for which they are not prepared.
With his award-winning touch, Trevor Cole has written a novel of great compassion and depth, taking an innovative approach to the brain-versus-heart debate that has been the material for philosophers, poets, dramatists, and novelists for centuries.
Praise for Hope Makes Love:
— Trevor Cole has crafted a novel of vivid emotional truths, grounded in characters so skilfully drawn they emerge as human beings captured on the page, rather than created. Zep and Hope are the unforgettable foundation for a novel that is gracious and graceful, powerful and clear-eyed, thoughtful, and full of life.
— The Globe and Mail
— Cole’s ability to make readers think is as important as his talent for making them laugh…. It’s the combination of comedy and tragedy — of science and emotion — that makes the book so rewarding.
— Quill and Quire
— This is a surprisingly soulful story.
…Cole has to figure out how to make us care… and he succeeds by making Hope extremely complex and by developing Zep's character arc in very smart ways.
— NOW magazine
— Zep is Cole's most engaging character yet, a windstorm of a man … The darker side of the novel clobbers the reader when Cole reveals the source of the PTSD that makes Hope make love.… To his credit, Cole makes it across the perilous tightrope between Hope's real suffering and Zep's bumbling attempts to remake himself as someone worth loving.
— The Winnipeg Free Press
— “Trevor Cole is the consummate craftsman, delicately placing each word in its right place, balancing each sentence to perfection, hitting each emotional note dead on. Hope Makes Love tackles the oldest and most unanswerable question: What is love? The answer: a riveting story, part funny, part sexy, occasionally tragic, and ultimately life-transforming."
— Angie Abdou, author of The Bone Cage
— “Combining a clinical approach to love with the real thing—real passion, real tenderness—is a tricky thing, but Trevor Cole pulls it off magnificently. The characters in this dark, profound, contemporary novel learn the hard way that love is the only balm that can cure a damaged heart. What a moving, powerful work by a brilliant author.” —Joe Kertes, author of Gratitude and The Afterlife of Stars
— “Hope Makes Love is, on its surface, a deceptively simple story of the Post-Breakup-I-Want-Her-Back variety. A few pages in, though, and the reader will discover that it contains multitudes. Trevor Cole takes on a number of serious issues - sexual assault, domestic violence and post -traumatic stress disorder, to name a few - and handles them with delicacy, humour and real compassion." — Anne Thériault, blogger, ‘The Belle Jar’