Don has a gig playing the piano in a Palm Springs bar, in the off season. Don isn’t his real name. He’s been on the run after accidentally killing the son of a mobster in a bar fight back in Chicago. One night, a woman comes to the bar and takes Don back to her motel, where she eventually reveals she knows who he is. Don is on the run again with hired thugs on his heals. Seeking a cool place to think, he goes to a bar he doesn’t know, where he meets Harlan, the kept boy of a famous movie star. Don isn’t gay, but he needs a place to stay while he figures out his next move.
This book was full of surprises. The blurb doesn’t mention the “gay for you” angle and nearly the first half of the story drives home the point that “Don” identifies as straight. Still, there are flashback scenes as the story unfolds, mostly to his time in the army fighting in Vietnam, which suggest Don may have always been at least a little bi-curious. The other surprises were the many – often violent – twists and turns the story takes along the way.
The entire story is related from Don’s point of view. He’s fundamentally a good person, or at least trying to be, but the young man was affected by his time in Vietnam in ways the people of the time didn’t understand. Today, we call it PTSD. Don is a complex character to pull off, but I found him very believable. He comes to terms with his feelings for Harlan very slowly, in a way that seems quite natural.
We only get to know Harlan through Don. There were probably a lot more young men like Harlan than people think back in Hollywood’s heyday. Sadly, even today, kids get thrown out of their home for being gay. Harlan understandably doesn’t go into too many details about his life on the streets and as a kept boy, but there’s enough to imagine what it might have been like. He is, as you might guess, smarter than people give him credit for and very resourceful as well.
“Desert Run” is available from Smashwords or see BookBub for additional ebook retailers.