It would have been very reasonable and understandable if she would have elected to use a pseudonym, and she didn't.Ī: There was nothing fancy, nothing high end about it. Here she is working as a small bar proprietor, trying to make enough to live on until she could make it to retirement and Social Security checks. She was writing this book when Senator McCarthy was still ranting and raving about things, a climate of what we could all call homophobia - great antagonism toward homosexuality and homosexuals, perversion and deviants, and all that sort of stuff. Q: What surprised you about the book and her story?Ī: It was just really remarkable that a woman like Helen would have been courageous enough, or bold enough, to publish this book with her real name attached to it. It was a pretty groundbreaking book: by my estimation, the first book by a straight person that depicts the lives of gay people positively.
Then I gradually began to realize it was more significant than that. It struck me as a kind of curious, quaint and somewhat charming period piece of a book. It occurred to me that a revival of the book seemed warranted.
