Few Hints and Clews — Robert Taylor

Tracing the loves and lives of two men, their families, and what it means to be gay in America in the Twentieth CenturyRobert Taylor, the author of All We Have is Now and Whose Eye is on Which Sparrow?, brings you a complex, moving novel of love and life. A Few Hints and Clews traces the pasts of two men-from their parents' lives through the historic events of the 20th century—reliving the experience of being gay in America during those years. The novel travels through the confusion of the 1940s and 50s to the Stonewall Revolution through the horror of AIDS and beyond, ultimately emerging as a warm, loving, and hopeful celebration of the courage it takes to throw off fear and uncertainty and live proudly as an openly gay couple.Excerpt from A Few Hints and Clews:An osprey swoops low over the water and comes to rest on a high branch of a fir tree. A loon calls from the cove off to his right.Maybe it's the mournfulness of that call. Maybe it's the long hours in intensive care. From somewhere come thoughts of those he's loved. And those he's lost. Does it make any sense, he wonders, all this loving and losing? Can he make it make sense? He leans back and closes his eyes. He should avoid these thoughts entirely. The way he used to. You never know where they'll take you, once you start. He opens his eyes.The bay is that deep, intense blue Adam has seen nowhere else. The mountains beyond (he knows they're really hills, but he thinks of them as mountains) are a blend of purple and green - more green when the sun shines directly on them, more purple when a cloud, round and white, drifts by. The sky is almost as blue as the water. Almost.As he sits there rocking, a breezeblowing toward him off the bay, glimpses of the past begin to move across his mind. Of his life and Tony's. Official versions first. The old family stories told by his parents, by their parents, by Tony's mother and sisters. Then, faint but insistent, more subtle memories come creeping in. Recollections of whispers, faint murmurs behind almost-closed doors, snatches of conversations no one knew he was overhearing. Should he try to line them up, these scattered fragments? See what he can make of it all?Better not, he thinks. Too complicated. Too painful. But . . . He sighs. If he doesn't look now, when what he loves most has been so threatened, he knows he never will. Before caution can assert itself and divert him back to the familiar safety of the surface, he plunges into the deep waters where the real story lies.He goes far back, as far as he can. He sees his mother lying in bed, propped up all around with fluffy pillows. She's a small girl, maybe seven or eight, pretty in a pert, almost sharp-faced way. Her dark brown hair hangs to her shoulders in long, spiraling curls. She wears a bright turquoise bed jacket (a color she will love all her life), ruffled up the front and down the back. Somebody has taken great care to see that she looks nice, even though she's been lying in this bed for almost a year.A Few Hints and Clews is a joyful ode to living and loving, a poetic look at what a life is and what it can become when you have someone to share it with.