Synopsis
Seattle, 1983. Frightened by the growing epidemic that has stricken his friends, Jeff flees New York for the Pacific Northwest, only to realize AIDS has a foothold in his new home. As he distracts himself with alcohol and one-night stands, Jeff meets Henry, an alluring younger man with a weakness for heroin. Despite the jarring contrasts in their personalities and backgrounds, the two are drawn inexorably together. But as their love develops, so do numerous complications. In an effort to halt their freefall into addiction, Jeff and Henry move in with Nan, a middle-aged divorcee who has turned her home into a sanctuary for gay men in crisis. The Rise and Fall of the Yellow House revisits the early years of AIDS in the Northwest with vivid detail, unrelenting honesty, and a profound compassion for a generation lost to the plague.
About the Author
Writer and critic John Whittier Treat has taught at Yale, Berkeley and Stanford, and is the author of Writing Ground Zero: Japanese Literature and Atomic Bomb (Chicago) and Great Mirrors Shatter: Japan, Orientalism and Homosexuality (Oxford). Relocating from New York City to Seattle in 1983, he was witness to the earliest days of the AIDS epidemic in the Pacific Northwest. Soon, he became involved with the local recovery community as AIDS affected gay men already struggling with addiction. Treat's fiction has appeared in literary journals, and his opinion pieces have been published in the New York Times and the Huffington Post. The Rise and Fall of the Yellow House is his first novel. Treat is now at work on a second novel, First Consonants, about a stutterer who saves the world.
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