What We Give, What We Take

Parade Magazine's 20 New LGBTQ+ Books We're Loving This YearWomen.com's10 LGBTQ Must-Reads for Pride MonthShe Knows.com's10 Books Featuring Mother-Child Relationships & All Their BeautifulComplexityIn 1967, Fay Stonewell, a water tank escape artist in Florida, leaves for Vietnam to join the Amazing Humansa jerry-rigged carnival there to entertain the troopsabandoning her disabled teenage son, Dickie, to the care of an abusive boyfriend.Months after Fays departure, Dickies troubled home life ends in a surprising act of violence that forces him to run away. He soon lands in Manhattan, where hes taken in by eccentric artist Laurence Jones. Fay, meanwhile, is also facing dangerous threats. From the night her plane jolts onto a darkened Saigon runway, she is forced to confront every bad decision shes ever made as she struggles to return to her son. But the Humans owner is hell-bent on keeping her in Vietnam, performing only for war-injured children at a hospital, daily reminders of the son shes left behind.Decades later, Dickie is forty, living in a Massachusetts coastal town with a man whos dying of AIDS, and doing everything he can to escape his past. But although Spin may be giving Dickie what hes always wanteda home without wheelsit seems that the farther Dickie runs, the tighter the past clings to him.Ultimately, What We Give, What We Take is a deeply moving story of second chances and rising above family circumstances, however dysfunctional they may be.