My next recommendation is a bit of a cheat, because it’s a short story rather than a novel. First published in 2013 and reprinted in 2015’s Stories for Chip, “Légendaire” by Kai Ashante Wilson features polyamory as a given, background to a fantastic tale of love and loss and imperious artistic destiny. “When she lies down with her husband or with her wife,” Wilson writes in the story’s fifth paragraph, matter-of-factly introducing us to the group marriage out of which his hero’s born. A few lines later he adds, so there’s no mistaking what’s meant, “Her wife and husband have long since gone to bed.” Such arrangements are not the focus of “«Légendaire.»” but its armature. In this case, the mundanity of multiply-partnered love is balm to my oversensitized, underprivileged heart.

To atone for choosing a short work I’ll recommend a second, bonus story by the same author, from 2014. In “The Devil in America”, Hazel Mae, mother of protagonist Easter, battles off the warped obscenities of an adversary accusing her of promiscuity, the vice most commonly–and mistakenly–associated with the polyamory she has secretly practiced.