Why We Never Danced the Charleston

0140082182. Marfree, superclean early prtg; tomed pp no names, not marked-in, underscored, clearance or discard. Mails from NYC usually within 12 hours.; Contemporary American [more]

0140082182. Marfree, superclean early prtg; tomed pp no names, not marked-in, underscored, clearance or discard. Mails from NYC usually within 12 hours.; Contemporary American Fiction; 7 x 5 x 1 inches; 151 pages; \n"Old stories never end; they just come down the generations to resolve themselves among the living. " The scene is Charleston, South Carolina; the time, the 1920s, when old ladies dream of the past and a strange new dance, "the Charleston, " is seducing the youth of the city. Years later, whispers emerge of something baffling and tragic that happened back then. As an old man confronts those demanding the truth, we catch brilliant flashes of the confrontation between the dark, doomed Hirsch Hess, son of immigrants, and the fantastically ethereal Ned Grimke, a scion of the city. Told in intoxicatingly beautiful prose, this story of passion, beauty and the deadly effects of sexual repression takes us to a specific time and place, yet simultaneously blossoms as a universal tale of the human heart in conflict with its era. This cult classic, set in the most intriguing period of one of America's most beautiful cities, is now restored to print with an afterword by its author that traces the facts upon which it is based. " A tragic gay romance set in 1920s Charleston, May 8, 2005 \nBy gac1003-\nIn this novel, the unnamed narrator recounts the love triangle between himself and two other men in 1920's Charleston-a very repressive time when even a new dance was considered shocking enough to have people arrested. The young narrator meets Ned Grimke, a shy, club-footed boy, when just a child and begins an unusual friendship. As they grow older, the narrator begins to distance himself from him, not liking the unusual attraction that Ned has for him; he soon learns that he himself has such strange urgings. He begins to haunt the secret places where such men meet: a waterfront area known as The Battery and the Peacock Alley Bar. \n\nOne night, the narrator meets the handsome...[less]