Reviewer Sandra Shwayder Sanchez: Sandra is
a retired attorney and co-founder of a small non-profit publishing
collective: The Wessex Collective with whom she has published two short fiction collections
(A Mile in These Shoes and Three Novellas) and one
novel, Stillbird.
Her most recent novel, The Secret of A Long Journey is soon to be released by Floricanto Press in April 2012 and her first novel, The Nun, originally published by Plain View Press in 1992 is being reissued in a 2nd Edition with additional material by PVP in March 2012.
Publisher: Savant Books and Publications
ISBN: 9780982998786
Publisher: Savant Books and Publications
ISBN: 9780982998786
Click Here To Purchase My Two Wives and Three Husbands
What’s not to love about this book? The cover proclaims it a “true love story” and it is that and more, it is also a coming of age, coming out and coming up story told with disarming candor, and simplicity. It is Stanley Gordon talking to a roomful of friends, with a wry wit, no self pity whatsoever, even when relating tragic memories and some regrets, and no self aggrandizement even when telling about hunting for grunion in the Pacific with Leslie Caron or sitting across a dinner table from Mae West.
As the title implies, this is the memoir of a gay man. As a child first realizing he is different, he hides the fact that he is gay (or as it was called in those days, queer) just as he often hides the fact that he is Jewish when he finds himself among people who refer to Jews as Kikes or “goddamn Jews” . . . he is, after all, a lover not a fighter.
Fresh out of high school Stanley lucks out and
receives a scholarship to study optometry, not something he dreamed
of, planned or even saw coming but the result of a friend’s
application on his behalf. Thus he comes into a profession that will
provide him a good living for years to come and help him pursue other
more romantic dreams.
He begins his adult life trying to live a
“normal” manly life: he marries a woman he does indeed truly love
(just not romantically) and enlists in the Army. Sessions with a
psychiatrist do not in fact cause him to become heterosexual (duh)
but they do help him come clean to his wife and eventually they
divorce because he believes she deserves more from a marriage.
His
second wife is also a woman he cares for who knows and accepts that
he is gay and has her own problems with men (so feels safer with gay
men). They enter into a marriage that is in reality a friendship.
They even have a son but eventually split up so each can look for
that something more that is missing from their lives. Their
friendship endures.
Stanley pursues his dream of producing
theatrical shows although without the success he hopes for, and finds
true love three times, although not without tragedy and loss. At one
point he even makes a pact with himself that if he doesn’t recover
from the loss of his second husband to cancer in three years time he
will end his life. It is noteworthy that he does not act rashly on
this suicidal ideation but gives himself time and perhaps the
promise of release at the end of a tunnel of grief, helps him
to recover.
At 88 the author is going strong and enjoying a long life that has been blessed with real true love several times. From WWII to the present this highly engaging personal memoir is also a story of a society slowly but surely changing its attitude toward gay men and women. Most of all it will inspire readers to live life to the fullest.
Click Here To Purchase My Two Wives and Three Husbands