CJ Hauser uses her now-beloved title essay as an anchor around which to explore the narratives of romantic love we are taught and which we tell ourselves, and the need to often rewrite those narratives to find an accurate version of ourselves in them. Told with a late-night barstool directness, through the sort of giddy confidences that usually pass between friends, Hauser relates, in dark and often funny ways, the pain of feeling out of sync with the world when you're going through the motions of a life story that doesn't match your reality. Hauser grapples with the art she loves to mine new understanding of what these sorts of narratives might have to offer as a way forward. These essays follow Hauser as she dismantles the narrative expectations she carried inside her, letting go of the roles she performed to make others comfortable, and seeking joy by tending relationships with community and chosen family--love stories in their own right. The essays capture the daily work of trying, if sometimes failing, to architect a new sort of life story, a new sort of family, a sort of home, to live in. 'The Crane Wife and Other Essays' asks what more inclusive storytelling about family and love and growth might offer us all.