A Gathering Storm by Jameson Currier; Chelsea Station Editions, $20
A gay college student is brutally beaten and left for dead in Jameson Currier's latest novel A Gathering Storm, an impressive work which had been hidden away for more than a decade in the author's closet. Writing in the aftermath of the Matthew Shepard murder, Currier, relieved to have committed his personal impression of it to paper, squirreled the manuscript away in a box. A copy of it recently discovered in one of his older computers was shopped around again for a publisher without success. Currier has printed the book through his own Chelsea Station Editions company, which aims to publish "work that was overlooked and ignored by other publishers; worthy gay-themed literature that needed to find its way into print."
The novel begins with the hateful beating of Danny, a college student who meets homophobic killers Rick and A.J. in a bar and becomes befriended by them. They deceive Danny into thinking they're interested in more than just drinks and chatter, and lure him into their truck and out to a field to mercilessly attack him. The narrative volleys between the crime's aftermath as law enforcement tries to piece together clues and evidence left behind, the community's reaction to the violence, the perpetrators' attempts to evade conviction, and Danny's past leading up to the hate crime. This technique widens the perspective of the characters and draws readers deep inside the minds, hearts, and motivations of everyone involved, including the two haters themselves, revealing the ways and means of their outwardly expressed homophobia.
Religion also plays a role in the novel, but is handled evenhandedly if profusely by Currier. Reverend Fletcher, owning up to the true unconditional love he preaches, is positioned directly in opposition to Reverend White, whose "God Hates Fags" position mobilizes into a hate-mongering funeral-picketing.
Currier admits that the hate crime of Matthew Shepard certainly informed his novel, but the author ventures further beyond that event by exploring other family members involved, how it was treated by law enforcement (including a fascinating chapter on the life of a blood sample), their take on the crime, and the aftermath, how it ballooned outward from a small Southern town to the country beyond.
Readers wishing not to relive the atrocity of the Shepard ordeal may want to pass on Currier's fictive re-imagining, but the book is a wonder of emotive writing and intuitive imagination, and ultimately becomes a fitting tribute to the community-scarring event which inspired it.