“At once realistic and mythological, intensely personal and public …”
LOS ANGELES—November 15, 2019—ReQueered Tales is proud to announce our twelfth release, available worldwide as a Kindle, Kobo, Nook and iBooks e-book, and in quality trade paperback, is “THE FAMILY OF MAX DESIR” by Robert Ferro.
“It is a quiet yet disquieting book, beautifully crafted, deeply moving and almost coincidentally gay.”
— Michael Lassell, LA Weekly
It was a family dealing with old values, acceptance and death. Max Desir loved his Italian roots and hearing his mother, Marie, recount tales of the old country. And he loved his American family, his father John a successful self-made businessman in New Jersey. As he came of age, Max discovered something else he loved – men – and met the love of his life in Italy. Now, at age 40, the family is split: Marie and his siblings accept Max and Nick as a stable, long-term couple but his father John does not. When a needlepoint family tree is to be hung at Christmas, it’s too much for John. Then the specter of death enters as Marie rapidly declines with brain cancer. Loyalties divided, acceptance of family is re-examined.
In this beautiful, haunting tale, told in Robert Ferro’s clear, impassioned narrative, he created a classic. “An honest, eloquent and entirely original novel … at once realistic and mythological, intensely personal and public … The Family of Max Desir is a triumph,” opined Edmund White.
Thirty years since his death from AIDS in 1988, a member of the pioneering Violet Quill New York writers group, and 25 years since its last appearance, Robert Ferro’s The Family of Max Desir continues to hold power of readers. Ulysses Dietz says: “The real punch of this book – which is why it remains so important as a cultural document and not just as a piece of modern literature – is that it made me feel VISIBLE. It is hard to grasp the power that books like this had, especially those that achieved some mainstream success in the late 1970s and early 1980s, in undergirding a burgeoning sense of identity and self-worth for those of us in Ferro’s generation.”
Walter Clemmons, in Newsweek, was ecstatic in praise: “Nobody has told this story before, and Robert Ferro has the power to make his telling definitive … his clear, impassioned narrative moves with wit and sensuous energy. It has shaken and excited me more than any recent American fiction. I want to give it to people. I want everyone to read it. ”
“Sensitive and original … beautifully sustained and often disturbing … at once deeply personal and universal” —New York Native
Originally published in 1983, this new edition includes a 2019 foreword by distinguished fellow author and friend Felice Picano. ReQueered Tales is reissuing Ferro’s four novels through 2021.
THE FAMILY OF MAX DESIR ebook:
Amazon: https://amzn.to/2Vvl3gc
Kobo: https://bit.ly/2B1Kqga
Nook: https://bit.ly/2IHyODw
Apple: https://apple.co/2B2pMga
US$4.95 • CAN$6.50 • UK£3.95 • EU€4.75 • AU$7.25
Trade paperback: https://amzn.to/323cifM
219 pgs • ISBN 978-1-951092-10-8
US$16.95 • CAN$21.95 • UK£13.95
