Secret Love

By Bart Schneider

Book Overview

"This extraordinary novel explores our deepest yearnings for joy and self-realization." - The Washington Post Jake Roseman is a forty-five-year-old attorney and media darling who leads civil rights protests with a surer touch than he manages his personal life. When Nisa Bohem, a young black activist and actress, is drawn to Jake, the two start a playful, complex romance. Nisa's actor friend Peter also crosses the color line in his love for Simon Sims, the estranged son of a renowned Baptist minister, who tries to reconcile his homosexuality with his participation in the Nation of Islam. As they open their hearts to love, each struggles for personal and spiritual equilibrium - a daunting task amid the political and social upheaval surrounding them in mid-1960's San Francisco. "Hip, soulful . . . irresistible . . . Secret Love is simultaneously a love story and a fine-grained investigation of race relations . . . Schneider is a savvy and empathetic writer. . . . He leaps into his characters' souls with the brashness of a bop trumpeter." - The New York Times Book Review "Heroes as thoroughly good-natured as Roseman don't appear very often in contemporary fiction. He's an absolute mensch, a big-hearted, brave, self-effacing hero." - San Francisco Chronicle

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 014200054X
• ISBN13: 9780142000540
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.7" x 5.1"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 12 and higher

Customer Reviews

Even as a non-fiction reader, I loved this book!

I admit-I don't read fiction because I'm a slow reader and I think there's too much information that I'm missing if I get involved in fiction. Having said that I loved Secret Love and am tempted to buy his previous book.I was very fortunate in that I lived in San Francisco in the years after the setting of this novel ['62-'63] and I highlited every city reference that Schneider mentions-streets, businesses, streetcars, sporting references-everything and the entire novel was one wonderful lookback for me. I cannot judge Secret Love by the standards of literary analysis but I can say that he presented an extremely compelling plot-certainly, in my opinion, far removed from anything that would fall under the rubric of "boring". Schneider's San Francisco falls into that exclusive period between the end of the "Beat" era and the onset of the more popularly known "Hippie" era with one of the main players actually getting a job behind the counter at that city icon of City Lights bookstore. A fitting dessert for a sumptious meal.

a great read

It's about time somebody wrote this book that takes a look at San Francisco during the era that the civil rights movement gets off the ground. A widowered Jewish civil rights lawyer falls in love with a young woman who is half black, half white, during a time when that meant a lot of exclusion for her. These characters are very skillfully done, and that whole era is conjured up in authentic ways. The book is sort of a valentine to the real ethnic mix that is San Francisco, not the touristy image it acquired. I read it in one sitting, couldn't put it down. Blue Bossa was a good novel, but this one is even better.