Having fitfully settled into his first meaningful relationship with his partner Matt, Nicholas must learn how to love by discovering his past. In the mist-shrouded Big Sur along California’s coast and Los Angeles, The Palisades is set during the social upheaval of the late sixties and the generation that came of it into the early nineties.Marjorie and Nicholas, mother and son, are reunited during one traumatic night in Big Sur, the place where their lives separated decades before. Nicholas is thrust into caring for her and begins to learn why she abandoned him. The story alternates between a son’s investigation into the lives of his mother and family and her telling him what happened and why from her delicate perspective.
The Palisades revolves around family, the search for and loss of sustainable love and how the threads of past lives inform current ones. Blending ancient culture with city culture, it is also about the healing nature of place and how we learn and love within it.
The Palisades examines the effects of a person vanishing from their loved one’s life, and the ripples it causes in their character. Ultimately, Nicholas and Marjorie must choose which path to take to transform their lives.
In a rich tapestry of characters, all of them buffeted by the changing currents of family, The Palisades is a novel of finding out how to love even in one’s darkest moments.
THE PALISADES was a 2011 Lambda Literary Award Finalist for Best Debut Gay Fiction.
A wonderful review of THE PALISADES by Matt Yau is on his amazing blog, “A Guy’s Moleskin Notebook,” is here: http://mattviews.wordpress.com/2010/08/17/307-the-palisades-tom-schabarum/
There are also 14 5 star reviews up on Amazon.com here: http://tinyurl.com/7p33rvy
Tom Schabarum | Writer 