DISCREET - The Complete Trilogy

by Earle Jay Goodman

In 1896, Leo Hayes was born into two Mormon pioneer families in the Snake River basin in southeastern Idaho. By 1910 he graduated eighth grade. He worked on the sugar beet farm and cattle ranch his father managed. One day his father hired a 22 year-old cowboy named Sean McKay. As Leo worked with the cowboy, they became friends.
Sean taught Leo the cowboy arts and how to play the guitar. They fell in love. Sean then taught Leo the arts of love. In the fall, Sean took Leo on a fall roundup and cattle drive. For the next four years they drove cattle. But during those short years, they saw less and less cattle drives being organized. The romantic age of the American cowboy drew slowly to a close.
In 1914 the young lovers returned to Idaho. They used their savings and bought a small stud ranch close to Leo’s family. They lived in the old barn’s tack room while they began their stud ranch operation. They were house raising when Leo’s life took a sharp turn in a totally unexpected direction.
Sean took sick with typhoid fever. Not wanting to leave Leo alone should the worst happen, Sean secretly handfasted their neighbor friend, Muriel Anne. Sean wanted to leave Leo a gift of love, so Sean and Muriel Anne secretly conspired to make a baby while she nursed him. After a lingering illness, Sean died. When Muriel Anne knew she was pregnant, she gave Sean’s letter to Leo. Sean asked Leo to marry Muriel Anne and raise his child to remember him by. Reluctantly, Leo married Muriel Anne. After the wedding, Leo consummated the marriage only to discover sex with a woman did not feel natural to him. He needed a man for love and romance.
Leo made an arrangement with Muriel Anne to remain her husband and live together for the sake of Sean’s child, but without intimate relations. Sean always told him to be true to himself.
Leo hired some help and focused on building up the stud ranch operation as he and Sean planned. He spent time with the sexually precocious Pastor from Pocatello, who introduced him to other men and boys of similar tastes.
Leo made new friends. When he could, he slept with them, yearning to find love and romance like he shared for four years with his beautiful Sean.
Muriel Anne surprised everyone that summer when she delivered twins, a boy and a girl. The children captured Leo’s heart. Finally, Leo met a tall, blond ranch hand, Albert Reynolds, from the huge neighboring cattle ranch. He felt a spark.
Things were finally looking up in his life.
Leo dedicated himself to building up the stud ranch operation he and Sean planned before Sean died of typhoid fever. He nurtured his family of Sean’s two little children by Murielle Anne.
Leo went out of his way to get to know Albert Reynolds who managed the cattle ranch up the road. Albert bore emotional scars from a horrendous childhood down in the Mormon Colonies in Mexico. Leo longed for Albert to share his love...and his bed, only Albert didn’t know how to love.
Slowly, Albert shared the story of how renegade Apaches massacred his family right before his eyes, shortly after he turned eleven. Raped, beaten and left for dead, Albert walked out of the mountains and found work in the horse barns of a huge rancho. The boss resented Albert and beat him regularly. Finally, Albert ran away. His aimless wanderings took him to a cattle ranch in the mountains. The Mormons working the ranch invited him to stay and eventually adopted him. A few years later, Poncho Villa’s marauding army murdered his adopted mother and brothers then drove all the Mormon colonists out of Mexico. He ended up in Idaho.
Slowly, Leo came to understand Albert’s cool reticence. Little by little, taking tiny baby steps, Leo finally broke through Albert’s icy exterior and revealed a beautiful man hidden away deep inside.

1257 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 26, 2018

About the author

Born in Murtaugh, Idaho, Earle grew up on the stories of his great-great-grandparents, some of the very first pioneers and settlers of the Intermountain West in the 1850s. A few years ago, Earle felt inspired to tell some of his ancestors' stories. He didn't want to write a history or biography, so he began working on a historically correct fictional gay romance set back in the 1910s - which grew into the 1,562-page Discreet Trilogy.

Earle loves reading a good story and is a sucker for romance novels. His favorite genres often have a regular guy struggling to overcome adversity who somehow manages to find love and success in the end.

Earle lived most of his adult life in Manhattan and the Hamptons before customers took him to Florida in 1997. He has been in a loving relationship with his life partner and business partner, Jimmy, since 1979. They married in 2009 on their thirtieth anniversary. They still live together – enjoying their work and sharing life.