Books: 439

Here Come the Brides: Reflections on Lesbian Love and Marriage
Ed. Audrey Bilger & Michele Kort
Seal Press
$17

Not all roses and champagne–though roses flourish and champagne flows–the book covers marriage; first stirrings, Candace Walsh, “A Tale of Two Cakes;” the carrying-through, Amelia Sauter’s cartoon “As the Girl Turns;” and some of the sadder, later, and sometimes inevitable breakups endured by couples of all genders, Eria Dyson’s “Eschaton, or The Gay Divorcées.” There is the lovely and historical “The First Brides: A Conversation with Kate Kendell and Phylis Lyon.” As the piece notes, Lyon and her late partner of fifty-six years, Del Martin, are “the legendary lesbians of twentieth-century California history,” among the founders of the Daughters of Bilitis and the first to marry in California 2004 and again in 2008. This engaging collection of first-person accounts makes an absorbing read.