Set in a small town in the middle of nowhere in the mid-1960s, Common Sons not only anticipates the coming gay revolution, but delineates its fields of battle in churches, schools and society, pitting fathers against sons, straight teens against gay teens, and self-hatred against self-respect.From the opening scene (where a reckless bout of drinking at a dance ends in a very public kiss between two teenage boys), the citizens of the small town of Common, New Mexico, become aware of the homosexuality in their midst. The two boys are unable to deal with their struggle in private as the story of their public kiss spreads through the small town. Some seek to destroy the relationship between the two boys, while others seek to destroy the two boys themselves. Common Sons is a moving tale of self-discovery, love and finding the courage to come out and come to grips with truth in the face of hatred and adversity. Reading some novels is like meeting somebody at a cocktail party, enjoying the chat and never seeing them again. Other novels become like friends whose company is enjoyed over and over. Such a book, for me, is Common Sons.Patricia Nell Warren, author of The Front Runner and The 'Wild Man

Common Sons

Donaghe, Ronald L.

Literature & Fiction

iUniverse Star

A broken-hearted and enraged Kelly decides to pose as a recruit at Lions Mouth Christian Ranch to discover why his beloved William committed suicide after experiencing religious conversion. In the isolated high mountains of the desert, where there is no way out, Kelly soon discovers the awful truth. But can he resist the powerful brainwashing or survive long enough to tell others? Or will he inevitably lose his own self-destiny in this deadly game of religious salvation?

The Salvation Mongers

Donaghe, Ronald

Writers Club Pr

Compared to the dangerous, rage-filled military of today, where even the hint of homosexuality will get one badly beaten or savagely murdered, mine were almost halcyon days as an openly gay Airman First Class, where my boyfriend and I could be together and everybody in my flight knew about us.They could have been halcyon days, that is, if it hadnt been for the madness of the war and the schizophrenia of the American public over that southeast Asian conflict; and if it hadnt been for the wife I left back home and the child we had. What should have been idyllic days of my youth spent proudly serving my country as a gay soldier were misspent, instead, trying to make sense of what had gone so terribly wrong, so fast: one day I was a gay college student, the next a self-loathing homosexual trapped in a straight marriage, and the next a GI in the military machine during Vietnam.Come to think of it, I wouldn't change a thing.

My Year of Living Heterosexually: And Other Adventures in Hell

Biographies & Memoirs

Leaders & Notable People

"Ronald L. Donaghe continues his series with a novel that excels both as a family and an action drama. Five years after the events of the novel Common Sons, young lovers Tom and Joel decide to start a family. The struggles they face come from unexpected sources, keeping readers guessing at the next obstacles or solutions. Donaghe delivers what should become a classic of gay literature."-Duane Simolke, author of The Acorn StoriesIn The Blind Season, the sequel to the best-selling novel Common Sons, Joel and his husband, Tom, decide to start a family. Knowing that two gay men will never be able to adopt, Joel and Tom decide to find a surrogate mother to carry their child. What they find is a lot more than they bargained for.Sharon Minninger, a beautiful and determined runaway from a Mennonite community near Nuevo Casas Grandes, Mexico, offers to carry their child. Her influence has more impact on their lives than the couple could ever have imagined.Joel and Tom discover that the backlash of their decision to be fathers is much worse than expected. They are unprepared for the venomous reaction from some of the less open-minded citizens of the small southwestern New Mexico town. Luckily, the two men have powerful allies in the battle over their child.

The Blind Season: Common Threads in the Life

When fourteen-year-old Will Barnett meets his Uncle Sean, whom he has not seen since he was six years old, Will is instantly captivated by his uncle's beauty and begins at that moment to fall in love. That such love is dangerous and forbidden, young Will is only vaguely aware. While trying to understand what his feelings mean, he is driven to write about his Uncle Sean and begins with these words: "Uncle Sean sure is pretty, but there's something wrong with him, anyway.""Donaghe's magic in crafting this tale was writing Will's journal in the voice of a fourteen-year-old The book is so realistic that one wonders what has become of Sean and Will since the box containing Will's journal was stowed away in the barn thirty years ago The novel is a natural for high school and publics libraries."-John R. Selig, Foreword Magazine

Uncle Sean

Letters In Search of Love

Some of these essays were in response to requests by the late John Preston and other editors for inclusion in their anthologies; others explore that same period--one of the darkest in my life, as well as one of the most valuable.

Xlibris, Corp.

I wrote most of the essays specifically for this book although some of them have appeared elsewhere. All of them are from experiences I had during a period in my life from about 1987 through 1991, which began with what I thought of as my greatest loss in life and ended with what I now consider my greatest gain. In a way, this period was the darkest of my life. I think I was clinically depressed, although I never went to a psychologist to find out. Yet strangely enough, given my chronic depression, this was one of the very best times of my life, as well. This period of years has a definite beginning. My lover of fourteen years came to me one night in January of 1987 and said that he wanted to break up, because he said he was heterosexual. Three months later, I ended up in Las Cruces, New Mexico living in a motel room, with a part-time job, without a car, and with the usual emotional baggage. An essay about that experience is not included, because I did not want to inflict on the reader the morose self-pity I engaged in and, at times, grimly enjoyed. But I do mention this breakup in several of the essays, since getting over it is, in a sense, a thread that ties all the essays in this collection together; the emotional fallout from it was partially responsible for the paths I took during that five-year period. At the beginning of this period, I felt old (in the gay male queen's sense of being old) at thirty-eight. At the end of this period, I was forty-three and feeling as if life was just beginning, feeling young and stronger than ever. In the beginning, I was fat and weak with a terrible self-concept; by the end, I could get behind a shovel in my garden and chunk dirt for hours without tiring. It was certainly the first time in my adult life when I was proud of my body, when I felt wonderful in a T-shirt and cutoffs. Even as a teenager, I'd never felt so confident about my appearance. In short, it took five years for me to cast off the previous fourteen. The struggle with anger and hurt made this period difficult, but by the end of it, I looked ahead with relish. In "Part One: Letters in Search of Love," the essays deal with my search for a new lover. In a clinical sense, I suppose the reason for this search has some fancy name; ordinary people, or country-western singers, however, would just say I was "on the rebound." It probably would have been a disaster had I "married" another man too soon, because I still did not know what my weaknesses or my strengths were. Although I did not find a lover through this exchange of letters, the process of the search was part of the healing necessary to bury my fourteen-year relationship. In all, I exchanged letters with at least two dozen men over a year-long period. From those letters, I discovered that my pain was not unique. Nor my loneliness. I also discovered that gay men accommodate adversity and their sexuality in surprisingly different ways. Letters from prisoners sometimes amused me, sometimes scared the Hell out of me, and gave me a safe peak into prison life. Other men who wrote were even more self-pitying than I was, which had a wonderful curative effect on my own self-pity. The most perplexing, maddening, and insulting letters came from a widower (age around seventy) whose wife of a thousand years had died and, now, he was answering ads from gay menat least I know that he answered my letter, which appeared in RFD. I say it was maddening because, in one of his letters, he sent a seven-page, single-spaced type-written document, stamped CONFIDENTIAL in which he laid down the law by which I would abide if I decided to become his plaything. There would be no discussion, no objections, and no input from me. He obviously hadn't bothered to read what I'd written in my letter for RFD or, like the plantation sla

Essays & Correspondence

AuthorHouse

United States

Banned Books

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Books by Donaghe, Ronald L.

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Common Sons

The Salvation Mongers

My Year of Living Heterosexually: And Other Adventures in Hell

The Blind Season: Common Threads in the Life

Uncle Sean

Letters In Search of Love

Letters In Search of Love

Common Sons