Some loves never end. They just wait. When a middle-aged man discovers his first love's father has died, he returns to Detroit after decades to confront the memory of the teenage romance that defined his understanding of love itself-only to discover that the past is never as finished as it seems. Wally has built a good life. A wife who shares his name. A home. The comfortable rhythms of middle age. But when an obituary catches his eye-Gerald Zawalski, 83, of Detroit-everything he thought he'd buried comes rushing back. In the summer of 1969, seventeen-year-old Wally met Dee at a cross-country meet. She was fifteen, fierce, and unforgettable. Theirs was a love of long drives and longer conversations, of ping-pong games that meant something else entirely, of a Camp Dearborn night when "I love you" finally found its voice. Wally understood, even then, that what they shared contained all four loves-the Greeks knew what they were talking about. But first loves rarely last. And Wally has spent decades convincing himself that what he built with another woman named Dianne was enough. Now, standing at Gerald's funeral, Wally comes face-to-face with Dee for the first time in years. The spark. The regret. The question he never stopped asking: What if? Dandelion Man: The Four Loves is a deeply personal memoir-novel about the love that shapes us, the lives we build in its aftermath, and the courage it takes to finally understand what we lost-and what we might still find. Set against the backdrop of 1969 Detroit, from all-boys Catholic schools to the draft lottery, from Polish family kitchens to the open road, this is a story about how one summer can echo across a lifetime.