Secret Love

by Bart Schneider

 “This extraordinary novel explores our deepest yearnings for joy and self-realization.” – The Washington Post
 
Jake Roseman is a forty-five-year-old attorney and media darling who leads civil rights protests with a surer touch than he manages his personal life. When Nisa Bohem, a young black activist and actress, is drawn to Jake, the two start a playful, complex romance. Nisa’s actor friend Peter also crosses the color line in his love for Simon Sims, the estranged son of a renowned Baptist minister, who tries to reconcile his homosexuality with his participation in the Nation of Islam. As they open their hearts to love, each struggles for personal and spiritual equilibrium – a daunting task amid the political and social upheaval surrounding them in mid-1960’s San Francisco.
 
“Hip, soulful . . . irresistible . . . Secret Love is simultaneously a love story and a fine-grained investigation of race relations . . . Schneider is a savvy and empathetic writer. . . . He leaps into his characters’ souls with the brashness of a bop trumpeter.” – The New York Times Book Review
 
“Heroes as thoroughly good-natured as Roseman don’t appear very often in contemporary fiction. He’s an absolute mensch, a big-hearted, brave, self-effacing hero.” – San Francisco Chronicle

Genres: Fiction

288 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2001

Reviews

[Beth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I guess I can't handle homosexuality, racial issues and sex treated so roughly.

[Dina Sokal]

In Secret Love, Bart Schneider explores the 1960’s—the fight for civil rights, for women and for gays. We made progress back then, but current politics suggest the fight is not over and never will be. By reading Secret Love in 2025, we see where we’ve come from and how history repeats itself.

Schneider’s main character, Jake, is a Jewish lawyer who fights for civil rights and has his own backstory. His wife died and Jake struggles to care for his two children and half-demented father who opposes the civil rights movement. Jake falls in love with a young black woman, and her gay friend falls in love with a black man. It’s through the lens of these relationships and how they evolve, that we see the politics of the times and how differences between people pull them apart despite their common human connections. The book seems dated by its setting in the 60’s but its themes of disparity, inequality, politics, loss and family remain universal.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've labeled this "historical fiction," which may be a little odd for a book set in the mid-1960s, but so much of the story is about particular aspects of that time period that it seems appropriate. It was fascinating to read about race relations in my hometown (well, across the Bay--it's set in SF primarily, although there are some fun scenes in a couple of my favorite places in Berkeley) a few years before I was born. Reading the book today made it sound as if we've advanced light years from that time--at least in terms of the level of acceptability for blatant racist behavior and discrimination, not to mention acceptance of GLBT folks. The two main relationships explored in the book, both multiracial, one same-sex and one opposite-sex, don't get exactly equal emphasis: the heterosexual one involves the central characters; the gay male couple are each connected in some way to the man and woman of the other couple, so that's the lens through which their story is told. But all the characters are fully developed, and the writing is excellent. I'll have to try another of Schneider's, especially since's a fellow Bay Area transplant to MN!

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Set in San Francisco in the 1960s. Jake Rosema, a Jewish civil rights lawyer, falls in love with a young black demonstrator. Meanwhile, he hastwo kids trying to recover from their mother's suicide and an elderly, crankily racist father. The other "secret love" in the story is of Simon Sims, a bright young black man who falls in love with a white man.