Julia Glass Brings Back Gay Protagonist from Three Junes, Sequel

Fenno McLeod, the bookstore-owning gay man who was the soul of Julia Glass's National Book Award winning debut Three Junes and returned in her second novel The Whole World Over, emerges again in her new, fifth novel, And the Dark Sacred Night [and Kindle]. Once more exploring the many forms of family, Glass tells this story in close third-person from five points of view, from nearly as many locations: New Jersey to Vermont to Cape Cod. At forty, inert Kit Noonan seeks out the father he's never known, against his mother Daphne's wishes. She was eighteen when she gave birth to him and had once been the lover of Malachy Burns, Fenno's musical friend who died of aids in Three Junes. On his quest Kit meets, among others, Malachy's mother and Fenno and his partner Walter Kinderman. The Dallas Morning News critic says, "Glass’s prose is so lovely and filled with felicitous phrases and insights that when she orchestrates a family reunion, the reader is apt to just follow along like Kit, knowing the music is bound to enthrall."