Alma's Will

My mate Anel Viz is a prolific and gifted author.  His latest gay-shaded novel is Alma's Will. It's just had not one but two rave reviews.  I've read some of it and as usual it is insightful and beautifully written.

From the first review:

An old woman's dying wish to turn her house into a safe home for troubled gay teenagers stirs up painful memories and bitter resentments, but also leads to tearful reunions and--someday, perhaps--to healing. Livia Redding returns to Macon, Georgia, with her husband and children after her mother's death to settle her estate. She is shocked and offended to hear that the will stipulates that her house be used as a safe home for gay teenagers rejected by their families. Against her husband's better judgment, Liv decides to contest it and stay on in Georgia with their children. But her mother had a reason for making the bequest: her son, Ronnie, who disappeared a quarter-century ago, after his father threw him out of the house because he was gay.

From the second:

How often does one find a novel whose protagonist is a straight woman listed as an M/M novel?  In this incisive psychological examination of homophobia by accomplished author Anel Viz you find just that.  The result, in Viz’s highly capable hands, is an important novel which needs to be read much more than “M/M romance” in spite of the usual fare of M/M publisher..

When a lonely old woman dies, her daughter, Liv, travels across the country to attend her graveside memorial, finding her mother’s two young male neighbors there.  It is not until they are also present at the reading of the will that she is shocked first to learn that her mother has left her house to be turned into a haven for homeless gay teenagers, and that the two young men are a gay couple who have been put in charge of arranging for this to happen.  Liv is incensed, not so much that she did not get the house but that her mother made this particular choice.  She contests the will, stating, untruthfully, that her mother had no reason to make this choice and must have been in her dotage and influenced by the two gay men -- untruthfully because she knows full well that her mother did not stop her father from throwing their son out of the house and onto the streets when he was discovered to be gay.  Liv sets in motion a maelstrom that makes her ignore her loved ones’ needs, alienates her husband, puts her children in jeopardy, adds yet another rejection to her brother’s life, and attempts to rob her own mother of her one chance at redemption.


You can buy it from Amazon or preferably, directly from the publisher, here.