The devotee

How do we come to be who we are sexually?How do we cope with the forces of desire?How can we understand the relationship between the transcendent and the physical, between the wish for love and the anarchy of the erotic?Daniel Bergner looks for answers in the stories of four people whose longings are very different from our own: a devoted husband burdened by an insatiable foot fetish, a clothing designer who finds ecstasy in the pain of others, a man smitten with his young stepdaughter, and an advertising director who casts traditionally beautiful models but who is attracted only to amputees.…