It’s the summer of 2012, and after 25 years the cast of Paul Russell’s critically acclaimed first novel The Salt Point reconvene for a radiant and disturbing weekend in the Hudson Valley. Anatole is getting married to his boyfriend of 12 years. Lydia is now the mother of a captivating 17 year old. Having worked as a private military contractor in Iraq, Chris has returned to the US for the first time in many years. And no one knows whatever happened to the beloved, legendary Leigh, “Our Boy of the Mall”—until Chris, who hates unfinished business, decides to track him down. These once-close friends have not only lost touch with each other, some have also lost their way. Moving, at times shocking, and always memorable, Immaculate Blue exposes those moments when the personal and the political come together to shape our lives in unexpected ways.
Immaculate Blue
Review of Immaculate Blue
“Intense… and often devastatingly erotic…. While Immaculate Blue spends ample time in the shadows, the novel emerges as a defiant dance of life, a guiltless doubling down on sensual pleasure as the Grim Reaper edges ever nearer and middle age settles in. What simpatico souls will be at your side when you cross those thresholds, and what will they inspire you to do? Although they are deeply flawed, you could do a lot worse than the characters in Immaculate Blue” — Chronogram
Praise for Paul Russell’s novels:
“Intimate and epic, gorgeously written, divinely detailed, The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov is an ingenious hybrid of a book, powerful, troubling, exciting.” — Sigrid Nunez
“The Coming Storm takes off from a sensational subject to arrive at unexpected heights and subtleties. It’s both unsettling and touching… well-nigh flawless.”—The Washington Post Book World
“Boys of Life is simply great writing — risky, honest, horrifying and insightful…. A forthright vision of love’s darkest possibilities.” — Dorothy Allison
“If Tennessee Williams were young today and a Yankee, The Salt Point is the novel he might have written. It finds the sacred and poetic even in the slag heap of small-town America.” — Edmund White
