Since his 2006 debut, novelist Lewis DeSimone has established a reputation as an insightful chronicler of the changing landscape of gay life.
His novels Chemistry, The Heart’s History, and Channeling Morgan tackle topics as diverse as mental health, AIDS, and the celebrity closet. But the core issue they all have in common is the hard and necessary struggle for self-knowledge and acceptance. As DeSimone’s latest novel, Exit Wounds, demonstrates, that struggle doesn’t end at some magical point of “maturity,” particularly in turbulent periods like the present, when cultural shifts happen so quickly we don’t have time to fully grasp what we’re losing in the process.
“Funny, surprising, thoughtful and sad, DeSimone’s Exit Wounds is his love letter to San Francisco and a long overdue paean to the sustaining nature of gay male friendships. Craig’s story could be any one of our stories, and his experience as a juror illuminates our often bizarre justice system.”
—Felice Picano, author of Ambidextrous: The Secret Lives of Children
“With Exit Wounds, Lewis DeSimone captures the shifting cultural landscape of contemporary San Francisco, generational rifts between gay men, the occasional cocktail-sipping barb that hits too close to home, and even the inherent racism of the criminal justice system, all with a deft and delicate hand.”
—Jim Provenzano, author of Finding Tulsa and other novels
“With considerable wit and wisdom, Lewis DeSimone joins the ranks of Stephen McCauley, Andrew Holleran, Michael Cunningham, and Patrick Gale in vividly bringing to life gay characters coping with middle age in all its effronteries and affordances. Exit Wounds focuses on a tight-knit group of older gay friends in San Francisco who face change on every front: from aging bodies and waning desires to an assimilated younger gay generation (“even fags are straight now”) and a transforming cityscape where independent bookstores, like the one run by the narrator, don’t stand a chance. What survives is the love that binds these friends to each other and to a city that, despite its sometimes alienating transformations, remains alive, beckoning, fabulous: in a word, home. Writing with heart-felt sentiment but without sentimentality, DeSimone has crafted a glowing anthem to a place and to the possibilities of personal transformation amid inevitable change.“
—Joseph Allen Boone, author of Furnace Creek and Conditions of Precarity
“With just the right combination of realistic dialogue, barbed criticisms, dark humor, and engrossing plot and narration, DeSimone has, as he has with his former books, hit the sweet spot in this immersive tale of aging gay men, the pains and pleasures of jury duty, and the myriad ways in which queers coexist, attempt to stay sane, retain happiness, and, against a barrage of barriers, thrive. This is a seamless, impressively written love letter to San Francisco and the vibrant, colorful tapestry of communities which make it tick.”
—Jim Piechota, Bay Area Reporter
Lewis DeSimone 