HE LANDS IN PALM SPRINGS

Gay priests, starting over in sunny California, weather mild relationship turbulence in this romance novel.

This follow-up to Shekleton’s Father Tierney Stumbles (2011) finds Joe Tierney, a gay Catholic priest who lost his job as pastor of a Midwestern parish after he publicly came out, arriving in the wealthy desert town of Palm Springs. He’s there to take a job as a housekeeper at gay resort Casa Vista Oro, and to repair his relationship with his ex-boyfriend, Kenny O’Connor,whom he’d dumped out of fear and shame. Kenny feels guilty that Joe contracted HIV from him, but he also has a new Marine boyfriend, Jasper Wylands, to whom he’s committed. Fortunately for Joe, another prospect emerges in an attractive, 23-year-old sex worker named Oscar Del Rio, a mature, thoughtful man who recognizes a kindred soul in Joe and establishes a platonic friendship with him—albeit one with lots of sexual tension. Complicating things is the arrival of Edward Brockton, an older, gay Episcopal priest who counseled Joe in the past and now hopes to kindle a romance with him—and maybe with Oscar, too. Meanwhile, Casa Vista Oro’s proprietor, Cy Anastasis, sets out to disrupt Joe and Oscar’s relationship because he fears that Oscar might contract HIV—and so he can continue enjoying Oscar’s services himself. Cy undermines Joe through subtle machinations, such as renting a room to Kenny and Jasper in the hope that seeing them together will send Joe into a breakdown, and trying to lure Joe into appearing in a porn video so that his halo of priestly idealism will be tarnished in Oscar’s eyes.

Shekleton’s yarn explores his characters’ psyches with sensitivity and nuance, and he subtly registers both the niceties of social pressure—“He was the image of a peón before the master: dark-skinned, sweaty and subservient,” the half Mexican, half Irish Joe reflects, when summoned by Cy for a talk—and the quiet intensity of longing: “ ‘I was falling in love with him,’ Edward said, just above a whisper. His eyes wet, he blinked back tears.” Unfortunately, the novel’s interiority means that nothing much happens beyond people ruminating and calling each other up for dates and having heart-to-hearts. The characters spend a lot of time gazing at one another, but when explicit sex occurs, it’s tastefully done and not at all disruptive. Joe’s angst over his HIV status and residual Catholic guilt feels overdone in a gay-friendly Palm Springs that welcomes him with open arms, and the moral dilemmas that Cy’s ploys pose—to be, or not to be in a porn film?—seem contrived and silly. Shekleton’s attempt to combine the setting’s hedonism with knotty spiritual depth means that characters often sound like couples counselors, even when he’s a sex worker talking about a ménage à trois (“The real point I want to make is...you are both attractive to me, as friends...and more than friends. Something we experienced fully last night”). As a result, the novel feels more sluggish than torrid.

A deeply felt but rather sedate exploration of love and new beginnings.