Part retrospective, part memoir in essays, Johnson's collection explores sexuality, religion, geography, the AIDS crisis, and more.

Fenton Johnson is the author of the novels The Man Who Loved Birds, Scissors, Paper, Rock, and Crossing the River, and the nonfiction books Keeping Faith and Geography of the Heart. Johnson has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He writes regularly for Harper's Magazine, and is a professor in the creative writing programs at the University of Arizona and Spalding University.

Table of Contents

Reader's Note

Prologue
On Fire

Part 1
North of the South, West of the West
Catholic in the South
Father to the Mother
Basketball Days
After Shock in San Francisco

Part II
Journals of the Plague Years
The Limitless Heart
Lucky Fellows
Death into Life
The Secret Decoder Ring Society
All That Is Human Is Mine
Safe(r) Sex
Invitation to the Dance
City of Innocence and Plague
From the Depths: Oscar Wilde's De Profundis in its Second Century



Part III
Power and Obedience: Restoring Pacifism to American Politics
In Between: Fiction Writer as Drag Queen
Ordinary Acts
God, Gays, and the Geography of Desire
Beyond Belief


Part IV
Witness and Storyteller
Shrines and Wonders
Reverence and Irony: On Beauty and the Sublime
Dreamers and Fools: Burning Man

Epilogue

Light in August


Acknowledgments

Publication Acknowledgments