Geography Of The Heart

Poignant and affectionate, Geography of the Heart is a moving portrait of Lambda Award winner Fenton Johnson, the son of a Kentucky whiskey brewer, and his fateful lover Larry Rose, who, three years into their intense relationship, died of AIDS.

Rose had been upfront about his condition from the start of his relationship with Johnson, and the knowledge left their interactions fraught with the pain of anticipated loss. Though Johnson never contracted the virus himself, Rose’s physical decline haunted him. He had come to depend on Rose for his care and understanding as much as Rose, increasingly fragile as their relationship progresses, depended on him.

The vivid, poignant, and wise tribute to his soulmate that Johnson has distilled into The Geography of the Heart is a memoir like no other, a startling story of compassion, perseverance, and the acute wounds that can linger in the shadow of true love.

In 1990, Larry Rose, the partner of novelist Fenton Johnson, died of complications from AIDS. In Geography of the Heart, Fenton, author of Scissors, Paper, Rock, Songs of the Soil, and Crossing the River, honors Rose with a beautifully written memoir. Alternating between his own story and Rose's as far back as childhood, Johnson fashions a moving portrait of the man who was "a teacher, [who] taught me how to love."