Bøger af Michael Quadland

On a wintry morning in 1974, Hank Preston makes a semen delivery to the New York Hospital Fertility Clinic. Running late, he takes the elevator rather than the stairway earmarked for such deliveries. A woman enters, the recipient of his semen, and a relationship develops that threatens to blow their already rocky lives to smithereens.To add to Hank's problems, his transgender boss at the Strand Bookstore is in love with him. But I'm straight, Hank protests. And I'm a woman, Joey insists.The odd intermingling of these vibrant characters makes for an unforgettable story. Hank needs to come to terms with what happened to him in Vietnam. Karen, the would-be mother, needs to clarify the difference between fantasy and reality. Joey, the sanest of the three, despite or maybe because of her gender mix-up, shares her wisdom and tries, somewhat unsuccessfully, to hold them all on course. Secrets are revealed as a twisting plot erupts in a fiery conclusion.Offspring is a story of longings, thwarted dreams, and the search for truth of family, and our fervent need to belong.

On a rainy afternoon in 1985, Corey Moore, a single, thirty-eight-year-old New York psychologist runs into his childhood girlfriend on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Eleventh Street, just up from Washington Square. Gina, an actress, is twice divorced and focused on her career. Corey attends her opening that evening, and three months later, they marry. Things donÆt go smoothly, though, as they hadnÆt twenty years earlier. Together, they buy an old house in Connecticut, thinking they might shore up their own sagging connection in the process of renovation. By means of flashback, the reader observes Corey and Gina as adolescents. We meet CoreyÆs music teacher, with whom Corey is involved, sexually. We meet the boys Gina uses to act out against the Catholic strangle hold of her parents. This backstory reaches a climax that blows all these relationships apart and marks Corey and Gina for life.Bored with the house restoration, Gina brings an actor friend to Connecticut one weekend. Jack and Corey hit it off from the start, and Corey is startled and dismayed at the intensity of his feelings for Jack. The novel follows their relationship over the succeeding three years, as a secret is revealed that changes everything for the two men.That Was Then is a story of adolescent confusion and trauma and its effect on adult lives. It is also a story of withholding and the damage that can come of it. Ultimately, it is a story of love appearing in unexpected and varied forms.