New York-bred Kevin O'Conover, white, gay and twenty-something, thought two weeks in San Francisco would make a fine holiday ... until he woke up in the dark, tied up on a concrete floor, and with a splitting headache. He finds Thad Heath, ex-Vietnam vet, black and straight, tied to a metal pole beside him. What are they doing held captive in crime boss Jack Corrigan's basement? Corrigan's maid Leona Ramirez helps them to escape in a van about to set out to distribute cocaine at a strip mall drop-off. Two thugs, vicious Sam and not-too-bright Kurt, are driving and, when the boys escape in the mall parking lot, there ensues a chase into the woods and hills where Kevin and Thad fall into the rescuing arms of Weslya, an off-the-grid reclusive child-of-the-60s pot-toking hippie ...
In this madcap, verging on surreal, adventure, Stan Leventhal spares no stereotype of comic treatment, while always employing a velvet, soft hand: you know goodness rules, even when Sam is on the loose. As in caper-style fast-paced stories, unlikely coincidences twist the action, sometimes like a whiplash: the reader has no choice but to chuckle and succumb. And following a plethora of other characters – a cocaine addled preacher's wife, an acolyte who bleeds literally for Jesus, an investigative journalist wearing brown polyester suits two sizes too big, two dykes as fire marshalls and Paula Bluefeather who ... well, it's a faerie-tale, after all, and the fun is how it all works out.
His second novel, Faultlines was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award on initial publication. It returns to print for the first time as part of ReQueered Tales' complete edition of Stan Leventhal's fiction. A foreword by Alexander Inglis is included.
