Simple Simon
Growing up in rural Arkansas, Simon Powell dreams of becoming an artist and escaping the expectations of his conservative family. His childhood in an ancestral mansion is shaped by family legends, an emotionally distant father, and an intimate friendship that leaves him struggling to understand his desires and his place in the world.
At eighteen, heartbroken and searching for meaning, Simon turns to mysticism and experiments with LSD before finding purpose in Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church. Over the next decade, he sacrifices his personal ambitions, rises through the church's leadership, and attempts to reconcile his religious devotion with the knowledge that he is gay.
When his life begins to unravel, Simon faces the consequences of abandoning the identity he worked so hard to construct. Eventually entering drug rehabilitation, he begins writing about his past under the guidance of a perceptive counselor. His memories take him from the rural South into the world of an unconventional religious movement, through complicated relationships and painful choices, and toward the possibility of a life defined on his own terms.
Moving between childhood memory, religious experience, and the uncertain beginnings of recovery, Simple Simon is a work of literary fiction about belonging, self-deception, and the difficult process of discovering what one truly wants.
Winner, IndieReader Discovery Award for LGBT Fiction
Finalist, ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year, Gay & Lesbian Fiction
Simple Simon is Book Two in the Simon Powell Novels.
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