The Paternity Test by Michael Lowenthal | Hardcover, 288 pages
Having a baby to save a marriage—it’s the oldest of clichés. But what if the marriage at risk is a gay one, and having a baby involves a surrogate mother?Pat Faunce is a faltering romantic, a former poetry major who now writes textbooks. A decade into his relationship with Stu, an airline pilot from a fraught Jewish family, he fears he’s losing Stu to other men—and losing himself in their “no rules” arrangement. Yearning for a baby and a deeper commitment, he pressures Stu to move from Manhattan to Cape Cod, to the cottage where Pat spent boyhood summers.
As they struggle to adjust to their new life, they enlist a surrogate: Debora, a charismatic Brazilian immigrant, married to Danny, an American carpenter. Gradually, Pat and Debora bond, drawn together by the logistics of getting pregnant and away from their spouses. Pat gets caught between loyalties—to Stu and his family, to Debora, to his own potent desires—and wonders: is he fit to be a father?
In one of the first novels to explore the experience of gay men seeking a child through surrogacy, Michael Lowenthal writes passionately about marriages and mistakes, loyalty and betrayal, and about how our drive to create families can complicate the ones we already have. The Paternity Test is a provocative look at the new “family values.”
It has a 3.72 rating on Goodreads.
The Round House by Louise Erdrich | Hardcover, 321 pages
One Sunday in the spring of 1988, a woman living on a reservation in North Dakota is attacked. The details of the crime are slow to surface as Geraldine Coutts is traumatized and reluctant to relive or reveal what happened, either to the police or to her husband, Bazil, and thirteen-year-old son, Joe. In one day, Joe's life is irrevocably transformed. He tries to heal his mother, but she will not leave her bed and slips into an abyss of solitude. Increasingly alone, Joe finds himself thrust prematurely into an adult world for which he is ill prepared.While his father, who is a tribal judge, endeavors to wrest justice from a situation that defies his efforts, Joe becomes frustrated with the official investigation and sets out with his trusted friends, Cappy, Zack, and Angus, to get some answers of his own. Their quest takes them first to the Round House, a sacred space and place of worship for the Ojibwe. And this is only the beginning.
Written with undeniable urgency, and illuminating the harsh realities of contemporary life in a community where Ojibwe and white live uneasily together, The Round House is a brilliant and entertaining novel, a masterpiece of literary fiction. Louise Erdrich embraces tragedy, the comic, a spirit world very much present in the lives of her all-too-human characters, and a tale of injustice that is, unfortunately, an authentic reflection of what happens in our own world today.
It has a 3.98 rating on Goodreads.
The Year that Everything Changed by Georgia Bockoven | Paperback, 432 pages
As Jessie Patrick Reed's attorney, I'm writing to you on behalfof your father, Jessie Patrick Reed. I regret to inform you thatMr. Reed is dying. He has expressed a desire to see you . . .Elizabeth, even though sustained by a loving family, has suffered the mostfrom her father's seeming abandonment and for years has protected herselfwith a deep-seated anger that she hides from everyone.
Ginger, in love with a married man, will be forced to reevaluate everyrelationship she's ever had and will reach stunning conclusions that will changeher life forever.
Rachel learns of her father's existence the same day she finds out that herhusband of ten years has had an affair. She will receive the understanding andsupport she needs to survive from an unlikely and surprising source.
Christine is a young filmmaker, barely out of college, who now mustdecide if her few precious memories of a man she believed to be long dead areenough to give him a second chance.
Four sisters who never knew the others existed will find strength, love, and answers in the most unexpected places in . . . "The Year EverythingChanged."
It has a 3.56 rating on Goodreads.
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