This collection of essays by the author of Dancing on Tisha B'av, Winter Eyes, not to mention the Nick Hoffman mystery series, focuses on his twin comings-out, as a Jew and as a gay man. The child of Holocaust survivors, Raphael was raised in a secular Jewish household, and it was not until he was an adult that he began to explore and embrace his religion. In the process, he met Gersh, whom he would also explore and embrace ;-)) (sorry, irresistible!).

In an excellent essay, "Empty Memory? Gays in Holocaust Literature", Raphael addresses the question of gays in Nazi Germany, and has it right, I think, when he says that it is wrong to ignore or belittle the persecution of gays, but that it is also wrong, and historically inaccurate, not to understand the difference between the treatment of gays and the treatment of Jews, and the policy differences between them.

He does not allow himself, however, to separate his Jewishness and his gayness. He mentions speaking at a Jewish community center, along with a lesbian who is also the child of survivors, and being asked by other children of survivors why they "had to be gay" that evening! They could not understand his and Beck's "multiple identities as Jews, children of survivors, and homosexuals".

Here he says something important for all communities of faith, who ground their hatred of gays in the phrase, "It's religion". "Lies are lies. Hatred is hatred. As Jews we know what it sounds and feels and smells and tastes like. " When, at Yad Vashem's Hall of Remembrance, a ceremony to remember the gay and lesbian Jews who died in the Holocaust is interrupted by right-wing demonstrators calling the group "evil" and accusing them of blasphemy, this is no less hatred than the the demonization of Jews as Christ-killers, and the anti-Semitism of the Pat Buchanans of the world.

Not everything is this book is so intense, though. "Okemos, Michigan" is a heart-warming essay, describing how he and Gersh bought a house together, and how the house became a home. A humorous essay, "Selling Was Never My Line", will be appreciated by any author who has ever done a book tour.

I found connections between this book and my last, Isabel Allende's My Invented Country. Each is about how the writer's family history affected their writing, each describes exile (Allende's a physical exile from Chile, Rafael's a psychic exile as apart from the mainstream of straight, Christian America). And each tells us in the introductions of the impact of an act of terrorism. For Allende, two acts of terrorism: Tuesday, September 11, 1973, when a CIA-sponsored coup occurred that would send her into exile, when she lost a country, and Tuesday, September 11, 2001, which would make her view herself as an American, a day she found a country. For Raphael, the Oklahoma City bombing, which occurred on the day he received the offer to publish this book, sent the message that the terror that had savaged his family in Europe could strike much closer to home.