The Backlot Gay Book Forum discussion

This was quite a saga to read - the plot stretches from prologue in early 1950s through the heady NASA years of the 60s and 70s, into the Cambodian killing fields and then the AIDS epidemic before closing its final pages just after the Challenger disaster of 1986.

Through it all, readers follow two men – Tait Williams a journalist and Nick Sullivan a space cowboy, whose lives intersect and diverge at regular intervals. Although published as a gay romance title (Dreamspinner), this book is much much more than that. The author gives significant detail into the US space travel development program, a lot of the horrors faced by war correspondents covering the Khmer Rouge atrocities, the political game-playing and dealings by Republican presidential candidates. Readers will not find the usual boy-meets-boy, boy-gets-boy, boy-fights-boy, boys makeup route here. For the large part of the book, our two MCs are actually apart and fighting their own battles and demons individually or with other secondary characters.

And it is the secondary characters who raise this book above the standard Dreamspinner fare IMO. There are wonderfully drawn supporting female characters - Clare Sullivan (abiding love), Eleanor Bingham (controlling love), Alex Lopez (tough love) – all who impact Nick and Tait significantly both positively and negatively. Other characters – patriarchal senator, jaded news cameraman, sassy AIDS victim, caring doctor with a poverty background … all serve to make this one hell of a read. I was engaged, I cried, I could not put the book down, I loved it.

This is a definite 5-star read from me. Highly recommended.