Fellow Travelers

Mallon's latest novel is an engaging love story that is set in the '50s but has implications into the '90s and beyond. It isn't truly literary–the language will not be memorable–but its setting of a homosexual affair in the turbulent times of the McCarthy era is fascinating. How did some survive and others did not? It's not going to appeal to the Christian right, but for the rest of us its themes of forbidden love and idealogical zeal will give us something to think about.