Guest Post with Alan Kessler

Hi Everyone!

I am happy to be here today to bring you a guest post from Alan Kessler. Please held me in giving him a warm welcome.
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Why I wrote Gables Court, an unusual love story. 

Stereotyping, the handmaiden of prejudice, can be intellectually and emotionally destructive, both to the holder of negative, preconceived ideas and the recipient hurt by an insensitive remark, It is easy to stereotype. We don't have to alter our world view or change how we feel. We define the world along known values and certain groups are excluded. They are lesser. They are The Others. The fact we all have skin, bones, and blood is biologically evident, but for those who see the world only from their vantage point, and this is usually a place of advantage, we are not all equal. Money, power, education, separate us, liberals and conservatives each in their own tribe. The stereotype is forever looping and echoing in our mind and whether intentional or not, sends its poison into others--the disabled, the overweight; a weak child, a minority, the foreign, the odd. 

The above is a heavy introduction as to why I wrote Gables Court. But central to the story is what I, a male author, perceive as a gender stereotype: the young male as sexual hunter, interested in copulation and if love follows it's an unintended consequence. Samuel Baas, the  protagonist of the novel, isn't religious. His motivation for wanting love and marriage before intercourse isn't a value rooted in faith or family values. God for him is an abstraction. His father is valueless, a murderer; his mother loves cocktails and parties at her country club. No, Baas' quest comes from only one place. His heart.

I wanted to write about innocence, about a young man who, perhaps like many young women (my own stereotype, I know, ironic, I admit it) searches for romance--romance with a small r, and in his journey finds heartache, joy, disappointment, mystery, and, in the end, hope. 

All humans have likes and dislikes.  Recognizing this universality could free us to explore our preconceptions. If we acknowledge prejudice as a common trait we might be more open to examining our own. This, in turn, might lead to greater empathy, to reaching out to the marginalized and different, to believing there are men like Samuel Baas.

There is a generality I can accept. We have a universal need to connect to others and hope when doing this we not only find love but possess the courage, wisdom, and strength to accept it.

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Thanks for the post!!

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 More about the book:
Gables Court isn’t Romance, erotica, or faith-based fiction but it is about the resilience of the human spirit in our quest to find love. Although the language is adult, the scenes of intimacy aren’t graphic. I appreciate how Pearl S. Buck handled sexual matters in The Good Earth with the simple sentence: she taught him.

Age 24, Samuel Baas is a romantic and virgin who wants love and marriage before sex. After moving from staid New England to the hothouse world of Miami, he falls in love with Kate, the college girl he wants to marry. She isn’t interested in becoming anyone’s little wife. For her, sex is recreational.

A lawyer, Baas represents an accused Nazi war criminal and Haitians who, if deported, face retribution from the murderous Tonton Macoute. Head of a crime family, his father takes a special interest in his son’s legal career.  In this complicated world, Baas dates and tries to answer the central question in his life,

“Is love for someone else?”

Loneliness isn’t gender specific nor is alienation just a phase.

Over a span of ten years, Samuel Baas journeys toward intimacy—and his people

Gables Court isn’t intended to moralize about what is right or wrong. Without borders or mass, a mixture of joy, heartache, confusion, and mystery, love follows its own rules.

 
Happy Reading!