Author Larry Benjamin

Preacher’s kid Jackson and orphaned Oren grow up in the same dusty, poor, bible-thumping farm town. When they meet at 16, they discover they have more in common than just their roots and brutal upbringing. Together they begin to explore their orientation and their burgeoning love for each other. When they are threatened with consignment in conversion camp, they abruptly leave town together. Oren attends college, while Jackson learns a trade. In their new surroundings, they discover friends and a sense of safety for the first time.

Forty years later, when a shocking act of betrayal destroys their relationship, each is left wondering if there can be love after the apocalypse as they look back on a past they cannot change and a future they cannot predict.

Winner of the 34th Lambda Literary Award (Gay Romance), and a Next Generation Indie Book Award Finalist.

"Still teenagers, we had started to build the foundation of an eternal love, one kiss, one smile, one caress at a time. And in my youthful arrogance, I'd been sure the house of love we were building would be impervious to the world's disapprobation, no matter how mightily it huffed and puffed and blew."

Tristan and Max are a pair of Asian-American high school students who find themselves unexpectedly in love in post-Columbine America.

Tristan works to balance what it means to be an excellent son, with its prescribed expectations and attendant demands, with his growing desire for independence and his deepening feelings for Max. While Max, after years of hopelessness, feels himself come alive at Tristan's touch, he tries desperately to forge a path forward that centers his identity and allows him to fully express his feelings for Tristan.

Just seventeen, they are learning to navigate the multiple worlds they must live in to keep themselves and their growing love safe. Like any other dating couple, they are looking forward to attending prom and planning a trip to Paris the summer after graduation, before they start college, when a shocking act of homophobic violence shatters their world.

"My parents, unable to change me, had instead, silenced me. When they'd stilled my hands, they'd taken my words, made me lower my voice to a whisper. Later, I remained silent in defense, refusing to acknowledge the hateful words: Brainiac. Sissy. Antiman. Faggot."

Lincoln de Chabert's life is pretty unremarkable until he comes home from kindergarten and announces he will marry his best friend, Orlando, when he grows up.

His parents spring into immediate action, determined to fix him, igniting an epic battle of wills as Lincoln is determined to remain himself, and marry whom he chooses, at all costs.

When seventeen-year-old Thomas-Edward arrives for his freshman year at the University of Pennsylvania, he thinks he is ready for anything. Anything arrives quickly in the form of Dondi Whyte. Dondi is handsome, glamorous, and rich—everything Thomas is not. Is Thomas really ready for anything?

Thomas falls helplessly in love with Dondi and the two begin a love affair. When it ends abruptly, Thomas is devastated. To make up for breaking his heart, Dondi invites Thomas to spend the summer at his family's mansion by the sea. There, Thomas meets Dondi's brother, Matthew, and discovers it is sometimes in an ending that we find our beginning.

Told in 139 "vignettes," each dedicated to a single event, this is the story of four young men who meet in college, and follows them for more than two decades as they navigate the landscape of modern gay life.

Often playful and imaginative, but firmly grounded in the reality of gay men living in a perplexing, often hostile world, In His Eyes takes us on a journey with these men as they mature and fall in love, and struggle to maintain relationships among petty disappointments and broken dreams, while navigating the rough terrain of acceptance both internal and external.

As they break apart and come together, wound and heal, we are left to ask ourselves: does love ever really die, or is it just reborn in another time and place?