Just Like February: A Novel [Paperback] Batterman, Deborah

To Rachel, there’s no one in the world like her uncle Jake. Handsome and mysterious, he fills her with stories, sends postcards and gifts from exotic places. And he’s so much more fun to be with than her parents, who are always fighting. When she learns he’s gay, she keeps it under wraps. And when he gets sick, she doesn’t even tell her best friends. Until she realizes that secrecy does more harm than good.

Framed by the passions of the ’60s and the AIDS crisis of the ’80s, Just Like February begins with the wedding of Rachel’s parents when she’s five and ends with her sexual awakening as Jake is dying. As this poignant coming-of-age story unfolds, Rachel is forced to reckon with a home broken by the stormy love between her mother (a social worker) and her father (a Vietnam veteran) and a heart broken by the realities of homophobia and AIDS.

A native New Yorker, Deborah Batterman is the author of Shoes Hair Nails, a short story collection framed around everyday symbols in our world and their resonance in our lives. She is a Pushcart nominee and her award-winning fiction appears in the Women’s National Book Association’s 2017 centennial anthology. Her stories and essays have appeared in anthologies as well as various print and online journals, including Dr. T. J. Eckleburg Review, Akashic Book’s Terrible Twosdays, Every Mother Has a Story, Vol. 2, Open to Interpretation: Fading Light, and Mom Egg Review, Vol. 14. Learn more about her at deborahbatterman.com.