Dark Reflections

"A writer of seemingly limitless range." — Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours.

This Stonewall Book Award-winning novel traces the life and unrealized dreams of Arnold Hawley, a gay African American poet. The tale unfolds in three non-chronological parts, starting in the twenty-first century with Hawley's lonely old age and the failure of his latest volume of poetry. The narrative then retreats to the 1970s to recount Hawley's impulsive marriage to a homeless woman. A final section revisits the poet's student days, during which an aborted sexual encounter sets the pattern for a lifetime of regrets and missed opportunities. A meditation on isolation and sexual repression, Dark Reflections also offers an acerbic look at the literary world and the frustrations intrinsic to artistic life.

"A devastating and beautifully written study of the loneliness and despair that so often accompany the life of the mind in America." — Publishers Weekly

"Dark Reflections is among the most detailed, thoughtful, and heartbreaking portrayals of a writer's life." — Los Angeles Review of Books