So They Say: Collected Stories

By Jack A. Urquhart

So They Say, a compelling and moving coming-of-age story, follows southern-born protagonist, Rex Fordham, first as a sensitive outsider child and adolescent, and later as a sexually-repressed adult seeking his proper place in the world. The scope of Rex's struggle-the quest for acceptance and fulfillment in a world that proscribes the fundamental laws of interaction and attraction-is universal. The collection's structure is equally grand in scale.Spanning the late 1950s into the new century, Urquhart's twenty-one interconnected stories chart Rex's journey from small-town life, to high school and college, onward into marriage, fatherhood, and the traumas and heartbreak of divorce-and finally, life as an out gay man. It is a journey that moves from rural Florida, to the mountains of Colorado and San Francisco's Gold Coast, into the new century and Paris, scene of the collection's dramatic conclusion.Peopled with characters whose individuality and personality are unforgettable, Urquhart's cast is richly endowed with quirkiness, prejudice, self-denial, deceitfulness-and sometimes, a grand capacity for giving and receiving love. From Inez Fordham, Rex's Baptist-to-the bone mother, to Marcia Fordham, Rex's long-suffering wife, to oddball and secretive sons Alec and the ill-fated Peter, to Rex's larger-than-life lover, entrepreneur, Rand Osmond, So They Say teems with real people faced with real issues and choices of the kind that can make or break a life.Urquhart's Bildungsroman is further enriched by prose that evokes the transition from childhood and adolescence, with all its accompanying insecurities, to the slow and painful process of becoming a man-a man comfortable in his own skin. A man who understands the risks of loving and in being loved-and who is able to accept them.The book includes a reader's guide.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1466475196
• ISBN13: 9781466475199
• Release Date: November 2011
• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Weight: 1.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 1.5" x 5.0"