Ghost Quartet

Book excerpt: Ghost Quartet is a stunning exploration of love and ambition, sexual identity, and spiritual purpose. Set in the contemporary classical music world of New York and Tanglewood, the novel centers around the Faustian struggles of Ray Stoneson, a thirty-two-year-old composer, talented yet unrecognized. When Ray meets Perry Green, an internationally renowned, considerably older gay conductor and composer who is desperately attracted to him, both of their lives change inexorably. Perry offers to further Ray's career in exchange for a relationship; Ray eventually complies, but his secret sexual encounters with Perry threaten his relationship with Joy, the beautiful singer he longs to marry, and with Bobby, the idealistic but troubled young actor who is in love with Perry. With relentless suspense and profound psychological insight, Ghost Quartet moves toward a surprising, ironic, and powerful conclusion. Ghost Quartet is a compelling novel of aspiration and moral compromise, a finely crafted exploration of the boundaries that preserve the psyche and the damage that results when those boundaries are breached.