WE WILL NEVER BE ONLY FRIENDS STORY — Taylor Smith

Taylor Smith had already made friends with everyone he cared to know by the time he was a junior in college, including the theater people, writers, visual artists, and comp lit majors, as well as a variety of other oddball characters and a small group of students who shared his own major, Latin and Greek. The jocks were another group he was certain to stay away from. The jocks, who had baseball caps and crowded the dining hall's raucous tables, appeared to be an altogether different species that Will should avoid at all costs.When Will collided with Chris Maxey, also known as Maxey, everything was drastically altered. Maxey was a top wrestler who was physically intimidating, boisterous, and dedicated to becoming a Navy SEAL (where he would later serve for six years). The two formed a friendship that would become a pillar of each other's life as they continually lost and rediscovered each other and themselves in the years after graduation thanks to the peculiarly liberating circumstances of a little-known Yale secret society. Through marriages and a divorce, victories and heartbreaking losses, he traveled from New Haven to New York City, Hong Kong and Panama, and finally to a magnificent school on an island in the Bahamas.NEVER WILL WE BE JUST FRIENDS STORY follows a remarkable friendship through decades of difficulty and change. The thrill of human connection and how, if we can simply get over our assumptions, we may find some of our greatest friends are at the center of Schwalbe's magnificent new work.