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Synopsis

Welcome to the South. Circa 1969. Where everything is about to change.

Paul is an eleven year-old boy caught between his fundamentalist faith and the growing awareness of his sexuality. Lady is a black girl who has been integrated into Paul’s school and doesn’t want to be there. Helen, Paul’s mother, is trying to become a country music star to stave off her increasing disillusionment as wife and mother. Rupert, Paul’s father, is increasingly convinced that extra-terrestrials exist and he needs to find them. And Velvet Archer, Paul’s gorgeously attractive neighbor, haplessly careens between church and a career in an effort to save herself from her addictions.

Sharp, funny, and infused with a dark, sly cleverness, Wesley Gibson’s new novel, Personal Saviors, is a marvelous social snapshot of American lives desperate for any sort of salvation.

Wesley Gibson is the author of Shelter , a novel, and You Are Here , a memoir. His work has appeared in The Village Voice Literary Supplement, Men on Men 5 , Blackbird , Out Magazine , The New Art Examiner , and The Lambda Book Report , among others. He has been the recipient of a New York Foundation on the Arts Grant, a Mississippi Review Fiction Prize and a Virginia Commission on the Arts Grant, among others. He lives in San Francisco and teaches in the MFA Program at St. Mary’s College.