What Happened in Lake Erie by Charles L. Ross is a bold, unsettling novel that unfolds as a fictionalized sexual autobiography, tracing the forbidden desires and emotional confusion of Anthony Dimora, a gay boy raised in a conservative Italian-American family in the 1950s. From childhood through adulthood, Anthony grapples with his emerging sexuality and his increasingly fraught admiration for his distant, magnetic father. As family tensions sharpen, he seeks a relationship with a surrogate father figure, unaware of the secrets shaping his life. Only later does he gain the perspective to confront the darker truth behind their bond. Ross handles taboo material with humanity, humor, and surprising emotional depth.
What Happened in Lake Erie
"What Happened in Lake Erie is about a subject rarely dealt with—the desire a gay son feels for his father—which makes Ross’s sexual biography, like Portnoy’s Complaint, as funny as it is shocking.
- Andrew Holleran, author of Dancer from the Dance and Grief"A carefully wrought study of a gay boy’s coming-of-age." - Kirkus Reviews