Exiles in America
A Novel
Chapter One
Zachary Knowles and Daniel Wexler had been together for twenty-one years. They did not describe themselves as "married." Their generation distrusted the word.
Zack was forty-eight, Daniel forty-seven. They lived in Williamsburg, Virginia, in a 1930s colonial brick house on Indian Springs Road, a quiet residential street near the College of William and Mary. Daniel taught studio classes in painting at the school. Zack was a psychiatrist, Dr. Zachary Knowles, with a small practice in town and an office at home, just off their living room.
Nothing much ever happened in Williamsburg, and people at the college tended to become set in their routines. When an Iranian painter, Abbas Rohani, came to town to be artist in residence in September 2002, nobody thought to invite him and his wife to dinner. Daniel persuaded Zack that they should have them over.
"What if they don't like homosexuals?" said Zack.
"Hey, they're Muslims," said Daniel. "What if they hate Jews?"
Only Daniel was Jewish, born in Brooklyn and r ... read full excerpt from Exiles in America ebook
