Strange Brother

The year is 1927, and up in Harlem the joints are jumpin' with the sounds of the Jazz Age. In the dazzling commotion of the Magnolia Club, June Westbrook and Mark Thornton meet for the first time to embark on a brief but intense friendship. A fashionable socialite, June is drawn to Harlem in search of the exotic, only to encounter a people in touch with their emotions in a way she can only imagine. For Mark, his black friends offer him a temporary and comforting respite from the alienation of his "shadow" world - the world of homosexuality. Through June's friendship and infectious appetite for life, Mark begins to reveal his true self. But as the oppressive heat of New York summer wears on, his new-found identity gradually closes in on him. First published in 1931, Strange Brother is one of the earliest American novels to feature an openly gay man as its main character. Out of print for nearly, sixty years, its value today as a document of gay literary history is quite immeasurable.