Genre: Contemporary
LGBTQ+ Category: Gay
Reviewers: Jay, Tony, Ulysses (PRG)
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About The Book
John Hancock Darrow left his North Carolina hometown after college. The only reason he’s there twenty-eight years later is to deal with estate business when his mother and sister are killed in an automobile crash. The realtor he chooses to list his mother’s B&B can’t make that hurt less, but he can help John forget it for a while.
Small-town, self-employed, multiple job holding Daniel Washburn doesn’t expect more than after-dinner sex with the big-city lawyer. When the man turns up at the local ballroom studio a few days later, Daniel’s happy to dance with him. When they start working out an unusual deal for the B&B, they begin to feel like friends. Then during one of their many phone calls, John asks if he can take Daniel to dinner.
John and Daniel keep finding reasons to stay in touch. Then to be lovers. Then to get married. It’s a convenience, John says. Daniel knows it’s more. But John’s ten years older, successful, the kind of man who owns a million-dollar New York City condo and can afford to give away a house. If he wants Daniel on any terms, he surely has his reasons.
Daniel’s willing to wait for the right moment to put that convenience nonsense to rest. Because he’s got his own reasons, and the truth will set them free.
The Reviews
Jay
This is a very well written novel about a romance between two older, middle-aged men. John is a hot-shot lawyer, but is single partly because of abandonment issues. When he goes to deal with a house he has inherited, he meets Daniel, who dropped out of college for personal reasons and is getting by on a number of jobs, with issues of self esteem and family problems.
There is instant chemistry (and sex) but the romance grows slowly. When Daniel returns to education, the men enter into a marriage which both claim is one of convenience, but their love is obvious to their friends and families.
This is set against a great deal of information about their careers, their hobbies, and the people they know. The worldbuilding gives us a strong sense of their backgrounds and their characters, and whilst there is no serious drama other than self-questioning, there is constant interest in how they and others will react to their romance.
There is a sub-plot relating to coming out of the closet for Daniel’s ex, and another to John’s absent father.
A beautifully structured novel that builds a fascinating and detailed picture of the two men, and has the reader hoping all will go well for both of them. Highly recommended.
Five Stars.
Tony
Liberty is a gentle story about being strong and going for what you want from life, rather than doing what everyone expects of you. I’m not talking about selfish aims, but the ones that mean the most, without losing sight of those you love.
Talking about love, that’s the other strong theme in this romance. Yeah duh! The two main protagonists. John and Daniel, meet and are attracted to each other, but don’t see any way they could get together except for the fact they meet again at a dance studio. There is a running theme of Liberty, in the form of the Statue of Liberty, or Lady Liberty as referred to here, but I think there is also a case for thanking Lady Luck or Fortuna, one of the Fates.
John and Daniel have both been let down in love under similar circumstances. The story charts their different responses to that, and how strong it has made them. One of the things they have in common is their unwillingness to speak their true feelings for each other, although they are honest to their inner selves.
This book is full of southern charm and warmth, without making those of us with a cold Northern soul groan. It is not all smiles and rainbows, as the two guys have to face up to difficulties of a long distant relationship and ex partners who won’t stay down.
There are moments that make you chuckle, and others that make your heart sing. It took me a while to get into it but the rewards are well worth it. A really lovely read.
Ulysses
I liked this book from the start; but what seemed at first like a flirty little romance became, as the story unfolded, something ineffably profound and moving.
First we have the fifty-year-old New York corporate lawyer, returning to his small North Carolina hometown to settle his mother’s estate after a tragic accident has claimed the lives of both his mother and his sister. We only know his name is John.
Then there’s the realtor who’s taken on the task of selling John’s “problematic property,” a rambling Victorian turned into a bed-and-breakfast with far too many bedrooms for any family to want. Ten years younger than the lawyer, he overhears an awkward conversation between John and a local married man who, apparently, was his boyfriend back in high school.
The odd circumstances give the realtor the opportunity to come out to the lawyer, sharing a similar story of being jilted by a closeted boyfriend in the very same high school. This leads to a romantic interlude which might have been the end of it—had not John run into Daniel—as we learn his name is—at a local ballroom dancing club called Partner Up.
John is white, and from a “good” family in this small town near Asheville. He left town when he was rejected by his mother for being gay, and made his way into a big-city future. Daniel is black, and he stayed behind to help his family, who struggled financially and needed him. Two different men, half a generation apart, who have had similar experiences but different opportunities and made different choices as a result.
The core of this tale is the gradual awakening of John and Daniel to each other, their initial sexual interaction is a catalyst for a friendship that neither of them expected. John is a workaholic, and so is Daniel; but John has become rich, and Daniel is still barely getting by. Both of them are lonely. Both of them love to dance. Their common roots in the same repressed small southern town provide a link that becomes something more.
What is striking about Caluen’s story is that race, while significant, is not the driving force of the narrative. It seems that their ten-year age gap is the key. I get the feeling that, if they’d been in school together, both of their stories might have been different. Quite by accident, each of them gets a second chance at happiness.
It’s a subtle structure that Caluen weaves here, not following the usual romantic tropes. Each man balances his self-interest with his growing feelings for the other. It is not starry-eyed love at first sight; it is mutual respect that inspires self-transformation.
Five stars.
The Reviewers
Jay
I’ve been doing book reviews on my website, crossposted or linked to various social media, for a few years. I read a number of genres but I really enjoy all kinds of speculative fiction so thought I’d like to share my views with you. I love sci fi and other speculative fiction because of the way it can, at its best, make us see ourselves in a new light. Quite apart from the exciting stories, of course! I used to be an English teacher, and I’m a writer (fantasy) so I can be quite critical about style etc. but I hope I can also appreciate properly some books that don’t appeal to me personally but might be simply perfect for others. I have, obviously, read widely, and continue to do so.
Tony
Tony is an Englishman living amongst the Welsh and the Other Folk in the mountains of Wales. He lives with his partner of thirty-six years, four dogs, two ponies, various birds, and his bees. He is a retired lecturer and a writer of no renown but that doesn’t stop him enjoying what he used to think of as ‘sensible’ fantasy and sf. He’s surprised to find that if the story is well written and has likeable characters undergoing the trails of life, i.e. falling in love, falling out of love, having a bit of nooky (but not all the time), fending off foes, aliens and monsters, etc., he’ll be happy as a sandperson who has just offloaded a wagon of sand at the going market price. As long as there’s a story, he’s in. He aims to write fair and honest reviews. If he finds he is not the target reader he’ll move on.
Ulysses
Ulysses Grant Dietz grew up in Syracuse, New York, where his Leave It to Beaver life was enlivened by his fascination with vampires, from Bela Lugosi to Barnabas Collins. He studied French at Yale, and was trained to be a museum curator at the University of Delaware. A curator since 1980, Ulysses has never stopped writing fiction for the sheer pleasure of it. He created the character of Desmond Beckwith in 1988 as his personal response to Anne Rice’s landmark novels. Alyson Books released his first novel, Desmond, in 1998. Vampire in Suburbia, the sequel to Desmond, is his second novel.
Ulysses lives in suburban New Jersey with his husband of over 41 years and their two almost-grown children.
By the way, the name Ulysses was not his parents’ idea of a joke: he is a great-great grandson of Ulysses S. Grant, and his mother was the President’s last living great-grandchild. Every year on April 27 he gives a speech at Grant’s Tomb in New York City.
