John Rechy's new novel is a return to the themes and scenes of his classic, best-selling City of Night and a bittersweet memorial to a lost world — gay Los Angeles in the moment before AIDS. It is 1981, a summer night, and an unscripted ritual is about to take place. Young, beautiful Jesse is celebrating one year on the dazzling gay scene and plans to lose himself completely in its transient pleasures. He is joined by Dave, a leatherman bent on testing limits. A young hustler, an opera lover lost in fantasies of youth, a gang of teenagers looking for trouble — as the Santa Ana winds breathe fire down the hills of Los Angeles, stirring up desires and violence, these men circle ever closer to a confrontation as devastating as it is inevitable. Lyrical, humorous, and compassionate, The Coming of the Night proves again that as a novelist and chronicler of gay life John Rechy has no equal. The question Rechy asks is still potent: Would you die for sex? Rechy's sizzling literary response, The Coming of Night is as exciting as it is chilling. — Pamela Warrick, Los Angeles Times; [Rechy] very nearly touches greatness . . . feeling his way toward that place within each of us where the ecstatic teeters on the edge of psychic abyss. . .. A substantial artist. — Frank Browning, Salon.
