The Bread of Wickedness

by Gary Pool

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1885487207
• ISBN13: 9781885487209
• Release Date: June 1996
• Publisher: Brownell & Carroll
• Length: 199 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.5" x 5.8"

Customer Reviews

Gay fiction with integrity and intelligence!

Gary Pool's, "The Bread of Wickedness" combines the genres of popular fiction, political essay, and mystery with integrity and intelligence. "The Bread of Wickedness," Pool's awaited novel, confronts the mayhem and biases of small town midwestern America in true expose' fashion, yet also manages to challenge the complexity and subtelty of being gay in middle America -- it confronts our own homophobia and fear. Pool's characters are believable, memorable, and illuminate the thin lines that religious right arguments balance themselves upon. I think "Bread of Wickedness" will join ranks with classics like "The Front Runner" and "The Swimming Pool Library" to create a literary emblem of our time and place. It is a work of intelligence, readability, and vision brought to readers through a skillfully written story. We booked Gary Pool for a reading here at Crazy Ladies Bookstore and special ordered copies before release date. We encourage others in the midwest, west, east, and south to do the same. It's a must-read for the g/l/b liberated mind. Rebecca Steffen/Writer & Business Owner in Cincinnati, O

"The closet" is shown to be a glass house easily shattered.

What happens when a gay man in a small Midwestern town isforced out of the closet? Gary Pool's The Bread of Wickedness combines the "comingout story" with a detailed mystery novel plot. What makes the novel especially distinctive is its setting in a tiny, church-oriented community. Pool follows the lives of three closeted gay men, examining the myriad reasons for their life choices, and the circumstances that force them (for better or worse) to confront the homophobia of their small, conservative Christian community. Throughout the text, conservative Christian Bible thumping is set in opposition to a more subtle, and ultimately more ethically sound, moral philosophy: one built around an emphasis on trust, friendship, and compassion. The Bread of Wickedness demonstrates that fundamentalist family values serve to dissolve, rather than cement, families and friendships; similarly "the closet" is shown to be a false refuge, a glass house easily shattered. The violence with which Pool's gay characters' lives are threatened serves as a warning, both to those who ignore the hatred behind right-wing rhetoric, and to those who believe they can protect themselves by lying about their own identities. Review by novelist Carol Guess, author of "Seeing Dell"