Jennifer Hritz

I, Too, Have Suffered in the Garden Jennifer Hritz

Still suffering the fallout of his lover's death from AIDS a dozen years ago, Adam Atwater goes into a tailspin the summer after his fortieth birthday, embarking on what his partner, Joel, declares the "mother of all midlife crises." Crushed by Joel's refusal to adopt a child, tormented by his father's battle with lung cancer, and disgusted with his career, Adam seeks solace in an affair with a colleague, a contentious relationship that leaves him further from Joel than he ever imagined. As Adam cares for his father, memories of Bobby's illness begin to haunt him. Brutalized by the guilt he still carries from an affair he had as Bobby lay dying, Adam teeters between the past and the present, between the lover no longer living and the one who stands just within his reach. When Joel persuades Adam to accompany him on a weekend getaway to celebrate their anniversary, Adam begins to understand that confessing the truth--the whole truth--will leave him on the verge of losing everything he now holds dear. With poignancy, grace and infinitely readable prose, I, too, have Suffered in the Garden illuminates the legacy of psychological trauma, the ways in which the past can malign the present, and the sustainability of even the most fleeting sense of hope.