"Hello," I Lied

Book excerpt: From the Margaret A. Edwards Award–winning author of Deliver Us from Evie comes a novel about a gay teenager who discovers a different kind of love during an unforgettable summer in the Hamptons I’d always think of it as the summer that I loved a girl . . . Seventeen-year-old Lang Penner and his mother are spending the summer in the caretaker’s cottage at Roundelay, the sprawling East Hampton estate of legendary rocker Ben Nevada. Lang passes the time walking on the beach and hoping for a glimpse of his idol. When they finally meet, Nevada is very different from the man Lang imagined. He finds himself confiding in the retired star about his homosexuality. When Nevada hears Lang’s secret, he figures Lang is a safe bet to show the seventeen-year-old daughter of some friends from France a good time in the Hamptons. This was supposed to be the summer of Lang’s coming out. He even has a boyfriend, Alex, a twenty-year-old actor living in Manhattan. The last thing he expects is to become infatuated with a girl. “Hello,” I Lied is a story about all kinds of love—from friendship to physical attraction to hero worship—as a teenager bravely confronts his sexuality. This ebook features an illustrated personal history of M. E. Kerr including rare images from the author’s collection.