Summer's House

"One hot New York City summer in the 1970s, the lives of three very different people - each uncomfortable with his surroundings and struggling to find a place where he can feel a sense of belonging - are forever changed.". "Raymond, an overly cerebral seventeen-year-old, lives in the Bronx with his increasingly estranged parents. He's decided that the time has come for him to fall in love, even if he is unsure why or with which gender, and he's grappling with the conflicting directions in which he is pulled by his desires and fears.". "Jerome, one of the legion of unrecognized poets marginally employed, in his case as a delivery man for Seven Wonders Gourmet Foods, cannot rid himself of his obsession with the woman he loved and lived with - until she threw him out when he uncovered her secret past. His mentor - and sole friend - is the aging, erudite Maurice Rose, who, like Jerome, is about to be thrown out of his home.". "Lester, Raymond's maternal uncle, is the middle-aged owner of Seven Wonders Gourmet Foods and an unsuccessful suburbanite living on the edges of New York City. He must confront the miseries of his failing business, a tense home life, and a persistent obscene caller who knows a bit too much about his wife." "Drawn together by chance, circumstance, and a mysterious woman with a secret in her past, the three characters' lives intersect, collide, pull apart, and irreversibly change."--BOOK JACKET.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of LGBTQ+, Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.