Foreword
It is the great cliche of our age that we live in a time of perpetual crisis. This seems especially true on the broad scale of the international political arena where daily one desperate situation gives way to another in a domino-like progression that easily explains the nightmares of American Secretaries of State. But in fact the real crises are not those that achieve the status of newspaper headlines and play themselves out in a day or a week, to be forgotten as quickly as they arose. Rather they are the crises that occur in every individual who must now face the radical changes in human life being brought about by technological advance.
In particular, the new mobility implied by faster and faster transportation systems entails the gradual breaking down of that vital structure of western society, the family. This, coupled with advances in the field of contraception, has in turn produced a practical questioning of old systems of sexual morality. Long before the theoreticians began to wonder what the effects of these modernizations would be, men and women had begun to exercise their new prerogative: sexual pleasure without the danger of pregnancy and shot-gun marriages. Also, the relative safety and boredom of the life of the suburbs led many married couples to seek adventure in the form of a practice known as couple or mate-swapping. This can be viewed positively or negatively: either that the pressures of modern life forced these couples to seek adventure, or that the comfort produced by technical advance allowed a certain amount of freedom from the old rigid morality systems. Viewed positively, mate-swapping could be seen to have therapeutic effect in the case of many marriages that could not succeed, due to sexual incompatibility, on their own.
This is the area that author Morehouse has chosen to explore in this frank, hard-hitting novel. He has taken the case of a young couple whose marriage is not working due to sexual problems, and has portrayed those problems in graphic detail. The case is clear-cut: something must be done or this marriage will fall apart into acrimony and divorce. Without flinching from truthful description, the author shows the way in which the situation becomes clear to the wife's best friends, who decide they must do something about it. Their own marriages have been helped considerably by a swapping arrangement, so this is the avenue they decide to try in the case of the Dawsons.
Only the rapidly changing modern world could have produced this story, yet it is based upon a real-life situation that has happened to thousands of couples. While some might be shocked by the vivid evocation of the young woman's physical and mental reactions as she is slowly seduced into making love with the two husbands of her best friends at the same time, others will see that this sensual realism is necessary to make the reader actually feel what is happening before he can understand the complex motivations lying behind her surrender. Her reactions of depraved participation will surprise many readers and perhaps cause them to wonder how they would react in a similar situation. But this is the author's purpose: to allow the reader to experience every sensation undergone by his characters, so that he can feel the truth.
The publishers feel that honesty of this sort, and the artfulness of inducing the reader's own participation in the story through vivid, no-holds-barred writing, make this book one that deserves public attention. In describing dilemmas that face many in this complex and changing world, author Morehouse has performed a valuable service, and this novel contains lessons for us all, both young and old. For these reasons, the publishers are proud to bring this fine novel to their readers with the highest of recommendations.
--The Publishers Sausalito, California December, 1972