More Light — Jonathan Strong

Fiction. LGBT Studies. MORE LIGHT is a musical fantasia, in major and minor keys, of the generations at a crossroads and how the stories within our stories weave about us as we grow and change and remember. Iva Sturtevant, a soprano of some repute in provincial European opera houses, has returned to her childhood home to tend her ailing parents. Iva's brother, Leo Sturtevant, who has never left Josephine, Illinois, has recently been dismissed from his social service job, suspected of inappropriate behavior. Now, awaiting the inevitable disappearance of the oldest generation, Iva entertains Leo with tales from her obscure romantic operas, and Leo entices his big sister to read an old 1960s paperback about the world's last heterosexual, a novel dear to him for its mirror image of his own plight in a tiny rural town. This old novel even inspires Leo to write something himself, in secret, a mystery story about twin boys, one of them accused of a violent crime.