Daniel Roche's honest, affecting, and insightful memoir of his own "starter marriage" (begun when he was twenty-four and ended before his thirty-first birthday) is both an account of a uniquely American marriage and divorce, and the story of what one man's life as a husband taught him about being a man. This could be the story of hundreds of un-coupled young couples. Dan Roche's first marriage was anomalous in typically late-twentieth-century ways. Dan and his first wife married young. They never quite settled down during their eight-year marriage, spending about half their time apart, in job and grad-school bits and pieces. They hyphenated their last names. And when their marriage was over, Dan and his first wife and his second wife went out for Chinese together. Love's Labors is a deeply personal yet universal memoir of a modern marriage. For what lingers is not how different this marriage was, but how common, how full of everyday anxieties and hopes. Roche's story is a rare glimpse into the heart and soul of a man, in a voice that is sure and true--the husband's story of one couple's fight against traditional pressures in a modern marriage and divorce. And the choices they made about their independence, responsibilities, and commitment will speak to couples everywhere who are trying to forge their own, new version of an age-old institution.