Lies With Man – Michael Nava (Amble Press)

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There’s nothing like the ease and assuredness of a master at work, and Michael Nava’s Henry Rios series just gets better and better. This is Nava’s second book after an eighteen year gap, but the rest must have done him a world of good. Now on Bywater Books’ new imprint, Amble Press, Nava once again puts Rios through his paces as the out and proud criminal defense lawyer takes on his most involved case yet.

Newly sober, Rios finds himself in Los Angeles during the height of the AIDS epidemic in a community petrified about a Christian-sponsored ballot initiative that would force HIV positive people into quarantine camps. He takes on the job of counsel for an ostensibly peaceful activist group called QUEER (Queers United to End Erasure and Repression). That position becomes critical when Theo Latour, one of the group members, is accused of bombing an evangelical church that supported the quarantine, killing the pastor in the process.

Nava’s skill at plotting is as evident as his way with a character, and Daniel Herron, the pastor killed in the bombing, is a particularly perfect example. Herron is an old hippie, straight from Haight, who begins as an atheist and falls sideways into the evangelical life. In one of the more intriguing subplots, he also has a child with an old girlfriend who, unbeknownst to him, was pregnant when they lost track of each other. Many years on, when Herron is entrenched in the church hierarchy, he finds out about the boy, who is in the hospital with AIDS complications. Herron is such an interesting character, it’s almost a shame he dies in the accident. However, the remainder of the book is suffused with his presence.

Rios, too, is as complicated as always. Committed to staying sober, he’s also beginning to seek out a relationship with a guy named Josh. The fact that the accused, Theo, is Josh’s roommate doesn’t dissuade him a bit. Even the minor characters, such as Marc Unger, a sleazy fellow gay lawyer who bombards Rios with smarmy sexual remarks, and the bail bondsman/private investigator are interesting and well-drawn. Mention also needs to be made of Herron’s wife, an alcoholic who has a small but pivotal role to play in the ending.

Lies With Man is a perfect addition to the Henry Rios series, as sure and confident as you’d want. It’s great as a standalone and a good place to start if you’ve never read any of the others. Open it up and prepare yourself for quite the ride.

JW

© 2021 Jerry L. Wheeler

The Tender Grave – Sheri Reynolds (Bywater Books)

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Since my review blog is for independently published queer books, I rarely get a chance to look at mainstream literature or even the bestseller lists. I know that’s anathema to someone in my profession, but you only have time to read so many books, and I prefer stories in my own LGBTQ wheelhouse. It’s who I am and what I’m comfortable with. So, I had no idea who New York Times bestselling author Sheri Reynolds was. All I knew is The Tender Grave came in over the transom, so to speak, with some other Bywater Books. And it happened to be next on the list. I wasn’t prepared to be swept up in such a complex story whose back cover blurb totally belies its intensity.

Seventeen-year-old Dori has to leave town in a hurry. She and her boyfriend and some others have assaulted a gay classmate and left him for dead, so Dori’s mother gives her all the ready cash in the house and hustles her out on the first bus. Dori’s destination is the home of a long-lost older half-sister she’s never met. She doesn’t know that her sister, Teresa, is not only a lesbian but in a committed relationship with wife, Jen. Or that Teresa and Jen have been trying to get Teresa pregnant. All Dori knows is that the address she’s been carrying around is no good. After some false leads, she finally arrives on Teresa and Jen’s doorstep only to find that she and Teresa don’t like each other. In spite of her sister’s generosity, Dori runs away again. But her options are limited. Or are they?

In many ways, Dori and Teresa are opposites. Dori has taken a life; Teresa is trying to create one. Dori is headstrong and prone to impulsive decisions; Teresa is plodding and overthinks things. But once committed to a course of action, they are both determined to follow through. They both need family but have some very different ideas about what that looks like and what their roles are supposed to be. However, they know instinctively that their mother is a poor example.

Their mother, Hilda, only appears in a couple of scenes, but her presence is all over the place. Why did she abandon Teresa but stick around to raise Dori? Teresa desperately needs the answer to that question, especially since motherhood is her overriding ambition, but in the one scene they have together, Hilda doesn’t really provide one. Perhaps she can’t. She readily admits her shortcomings, but can’t explain her reasoning. She can never give Teresa what she needs, and as tough as being abandoned was, that realization may be even tougher.

Is the ending happy? Let’s just say Reynolds ends this the only way she can, with the essential question being how Dori and Teresa will shape their relationship moving forward. Reynolds does an admirable job of weaving character and plot. Dori’s scenes in particular will keep you on edge. She’s so volatile and has so many paths to destruction, you wonder which one she’ll take.

The Tender Grave is a splendid study of sibling relationships, full of rich, deep characters working their way through a totally believable and very unpredictable plot. It’s well worth your time and emotional investment.

JW

© 2021 Jerry L. Wheeler

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Shorn: Toys to Men, A Memoir – Dennis Milam Bensie (Indepedently Published)

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This was originally published ten years ago, but I didn’t encounter Bensie’s work until his next two books, One Gay American and Thirty Years a Dresser, both of which I enjoyed a great deal. As my TBR stack nearly reaches the ceiling now—and that’s not including ebooks—I had no hope of reading this until he reissued it with a new epilogue and provided me with an excuse. And I’m very glad he did.

Approaching sixty-five years old, I’ve seen just about every sexual kink imaginable, including the guy who only got turned on by the way my armpit skin wrinkled when my arms were at my side, so a haircutting fetish doesn’t seem too odd to me. But if Shorn was just about that, it wouldn’t be as interesting as it is. The actual fetish is less important than its origin, its practice, and its aftermath.

And, as always, its roots are in Bensie’s childhood, which he describes with alarming honesty, including his rape at the hands of a neighbor. Bensie details his experiences with cutting Barbie hair and fashioning his own “head” out of a wire hanger and yarn, all against the disapproval of his parents–especially his father. But there’s usually that one family member who gets it, and in Bensie’s case, his grandmother encourages his rich fantasy life. As Bensie graduates and gets married, however, his obsession grows. The marriage forces him to make choices, and ultimately he divorces and begins a backstage career in the theatre, freeing him to indulge as he never has before.

His worst impulses now given free rein, he obsesses over friends, acquaintances, and people he works with at the theatre. This works for a while, but eventually that circle grows smaller until he finds himself picking up strangers and hustlers, paying to give them haircuts. This part of the memoir is sheer Degradation Porn, relating how much time and money and bother he invests in feeding his addiction. He’s even included before, during, and after pictures of the trade he shears. Those snapshots are absolutely fascinating and provide an unsettling look at the dangerous reality of the situation.

Of course, this can’t last. As those of us who have followed our sexual obsessions know, and I know many, there comes a point of diminishing returns. You either stop, get help, or fall beyond reach into the abyss. Thankfully, Bensie got the help he needed through therapy and chemical balancing and managed to rid himself of many demons–or at least safely shut them away.

I’d be untruthful if I said I hadn’t read books like this before. But Bensie is so honest and unpretentious about his failings, never making excuses or blaming others, the matter-of-factness lifts this far above other books about personal downward spirals I’ve read. And his prose is entertaining. Bensie has a way with a story, as evidenced by his other two books. Shorn is all of a piece with those works, yet stands alone. If you have the others, you need this. If you haven’t, this is a perfect place to start.

JW

© 2021 Jerry L. Wheeler

Blood Moon: A Wolves of Wolf’s Point Novel – Catherine Lundoff (Queen of Swords Press)

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Queen of Swords Press

I’ve always said sequels are tricky and successful series are few and far between, but the ladies seem to have it down. I always enjoy Cari Hunter (Dark Peak), J.M. Redmann (Micky Knight), and Cheryl Head (Charlie Mack), and I can now add to that Catherine Lundoff’s Wolves of Wolf’s Point. The second book, Blood Moon, is a total winner. If you’re not familiar with the menopausal werewolves who guard the valley of Wolf’s Point, you should be. Everything about this series is a hoot and a holler.

The newest Pack members, Becca and Erin, have settled into a tentative relationship with each other in the aftermath of the Pack’s encounter with werewolf hunters who offered a “cure” for their lycanthropy. But they’re not out of danger. Waking up from a blackout, Erin finds a body in her car. Assuming she’s responsible because she fell off the wagon, she turns herself in to the local constabulary, but the full moon is close. The Pack has to get to her before the change comes. But before they can break her out, Erin is kidnapped from jail by a straight couple new to Wolf’s Point, bent on filming her change for fame and fortune. Becca, Alpha Shelly, and the rest of the Pack have their plates full trying to rescue Erin while solving a murder.

I loved everything about the first book, Silver Moon, and this installment is all of a piece with that. The very concept of female werewolves who begin their lycanthropic careers at menopause is a wonderful, empowering twist on the shifter genre, and Lundoff absolutely runs with it, even giving us a wolf cave with ancient magical paintings—world-building at its finest.

And Lundoff hits the ground running from the very first scene where Erin comes to grips with a blackout and a body in the trunk. That’s storytelling. The pace of this is such that you feel like she and the others barely have time for their wounds to heal from the last set-to before they take off on this adventure. That doesn’t mean, however, that this is all action. Lundoff does a fantastic job of creating peaks and valleys, populating those valleys with lots of characterization of Erin, Becca, Shelly, and Lizzie. Lizzie, the investigating officer and local authority figure, is especially interesting because she is on the cusp of menopause herself. She knows all about the Pack and is desperate to be a part of it. But not all are called. Lundoff also keeps Becca and Erin apart for most of the book, creating some delicious tension about whether or not they will actually get back together again should they both survive.  

Obstacles? Oh, there are many. Werebears, werejaguars, blind greed, and Annie, a curious holdover from Silver Moon. Annie killed the previous Alpha, but had also taken the aforementioned “cure,” which prevented her from fully changing and left her part human and part wolf. She roams the forests of Wolf’s Point in this hybrid state, assisting the Pack in their fight with the straight couple. She becomes the focal point of the last quarter of the book as the Pack has to decide what to do with her when all is said and done.

Blood Moon is a terrific read and a worthy successor to Silver Moon. Is it too early to start wishing for number three? I think not. Highly recommended.

JW

© 2021 Jerry L. Wheeler

If I Remember Him – Louis Flint Ceci (Beautiful Dreamer Press)

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Readers of Louis Flint Ceci’s first novel, Comfort Me, which focuses on the story of three high school friends growing up in small-town Croy, Oklahoma, will recognize many of the characters in his latest novel If I Remember Him. Although set fifteen years before the action of Comfort Me, during the summer of 1952, the actual action of If I Remember Him begins seventeen years before that, with the aftermath of a weather event so legendary, it has more than one name: The TriCounty Twister, the Cyclone of ’35, the Wild Horse Tornado, an example of what the indigenous Chicksaw call “Crazy Woman Weather.” Such a weather event nearly wiped Croy off the map: many families were wiped out, and plenty of others lost all they had; Lerner Philip Alquist, the town’s wealthiest citizen, lost his beloved wife Ada.  Overwhelmed by grief, and now devoid of any human warmth or feeling, Alquist manages to manipulate the City Council into approving the plans for a library as a memorial for his dead wife. Progress is slow as the city rebuilds, so it is only after a Depression, World War, and another war before the building can finally be dedicated. The last piece, the crowning touch, is a sculpture by Sunny Sohi, a final homage to Ada.

Into all the small-town drama enters an outsider: Andy Simms, the new music director at the Mt. Hermon Bible Church. Earnest, college-educated, and full of zeal, he is eager to succeed at his first musical ministry. But despite his best attempts at building bridges among the different communities of Croy, he only exacerbates the not-so-thinly-veiled bigotry barely hidden beneath the surface: the racism, religious dogmatism (and, when he takes up with Sohi, the sexual intolerance) all erupt, with lasting effects on all of the inhabitants of Croy.

Croy, ostensibly a small town, is an eclectic mix of White, Negro, and Indian—both American Indian, and Indian Indian. Not that Croy is a melting pot, by any means; rather it seems to be a mosaic, with its tiles carefully organized by color. Croy mirrors its creator, who demonstrates a wide-ranging interest in numerous subjects, many of which crop up throughout this novel: religion, poetry, music, even mathematics. (How often has the Fibonacci series been sited during a City Council meeting, really? And yet, within the context of the story, it works.) Far from depicting his characters as uneducated hicks, Ceci has done a stellar job of creating his characters, all with fully developed histories and interconnections (so typical of any small town). Ceci really shines as a writer when his characters grapple with matters of faith, having them speak with heart-felt eloquence. (And can I just say that I don’t think that I have ever read a more beautiful sexual communion between two men? There, I’ve said it.)

Prior visitors to Croy of course, will already have a sense of how the conflicts between the clashing personalities will play out; and even astute first-time readers of Ceci will know that, in 1950’s small-town mid-America, this story surely will not, cannot, end well. To his credit, Ceci does not shrink from depicting the virulence of bigotry and the toll it exacts on both its victims and perpetrators; virulence that extends years beyond the events retold here. And yet Ceci manages to inject some hope for the citizens of Croy, hope that might not come to fruition until Comfort Me, or even until the forthcoming Jacob’s Ladder.

Reviewed by Keith John Glaeske