by Alec Clayton – Gay rights activist Selena Winters is shot in the head while giving a speech at the Seattle Pride celebration. She is rushed to the hospital where a blood clot is removed from her brain. She slips into a coma. Selena’s husband, Marty, and family members gather to wait and see if she will ever regain consciousness.
Family conversations lead back to old conflicts and memories of Marty’s first wife, Maria in the 1960’s. Maria has two steps up on the sexual revolution, and she figures what Marty doesn’t know about her other boyfriend won’t hurt him. Their marriage comes to a suddenly end when she leaves him with no hint of where she may be. Marty’s obsession with finding Maria leads him to another woman, one in a religious commune who goes by the name of Marigold but whose real name is Selena. He marries Selena and takes her back home, and they build what seems to be a happy and normal life …
…until their son tells them he is gay and until Marty’s old friend Chuck, an embittered Vietnam vet, comes back into his life, until they run into trouble with a neo-Nazi group known as The Nation, and finally until Maria returns.
“There was always the chance, however slim, that some nutcase in the crowd would pull out a gun and blast somebody away. Marty and Chloe knew it, so they kept their eyes peeled. They might have felt a little silly about being so cautious; after all, nobody’d ever shot a Pride Day speaker, but they weren’t taking any chances.” – from the opening paragraph of The Wives of Marty Winters.
“Although it contains its share of tragedy, the book is fun to read. By the time I finished it, I felt that I knew the characters personally. The author introduced them in a Steinbeck” kind of way. – Van B. Cook – Amazon
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Publication year: 2007
Trade paper, 158 pages
$10.00 Amazon ISBN: 978-0980032208
Also available on Kindle.