All American Boy : A Novel

A gay man who fled his hometown in a cloud of scandal and guilt returns home to his estranged family{u2014}and the boy he left behind The first call is from Wally Day{u2019}s estranged mother, begging him to come home. The second is from Sebastian Garafolo, a Brown{u2019}s Mill cop Wally last spoke to when he confessed to having underage sex in the old apple orchard. Today, Garafolo is calling about something else entirely: Wally{u2019}s cousin Kyle is missing. Twenty years ago, Wally fled his hometown in shame. He returns to a place that has barely changed, where he knows who walks the streets by day and who comes out at night. Now, as circumstances force him to confront the events that drove him to leave who he was far behind, Wally must also face dark truths about his family . . . about a shattering night and a crime that still haunts him and shaped the man he has become. If he has any hope of embracing the future, he must first make peace with his past. All American Boy is a stunning novel about forbidden love, forgiveness, and hard-won redemption “Would you come home, Walter? Please?”With these desperate words from the mysterious, distant mother he hasn’t seen in ten years, Wally Day finds his carefully constructed world falling in on itself. For years, the handsome actor has made denial his own particular art form — from his stalled career to his emotionless embrace of the hard-edged boys who regularly traipse through his bedroom. But now, faced with this sudden intrusion from his past, Wally must confront the reasons he left his hometown of Brown’s Mill in a cloud of anger, shame, and guilt. He must look face-to-face upon the ghosts of his past: his mother, whom he once loved more than anyone else in the world; his abusive father, who never looked at Wally without contempt and suspicion; the life-affirming Miss Aletha, whose love had given Wally refuge; and most of all, Zandy — the man whose memory still haunts him, whose love for Wally had been called a crime.As Wally unravels the dark side of his All-American family, he has a chance to make peace with the boy he was in order to become the man he needs to be. He is once more the 14-year-old living at Miss Aletha’s house on the wrong side of town, the music of Saturday Night Fever providing the charged, erotic soundtrack to his life. The world was on the exuberant edge of change in those days, and Wally relives the thrill of discovery, the promise of forbidden sex — and the mistake that cost him everything.It’s a journey that will take Wally back to his past—to a time when he was the good son, the smartest boy in his class, the shining picture of the All-American Boy.Bestselling author William J. Mann has written his most powerful work yet: a searing novel about the difference between going home and finding yourself there. By turns poignant and sexy, harrowing and hopeful, All American Boy is a big, wise book filled with insight, humor, hurt, truth, and the ever-renewing hope of love.