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WINNNER OF THE CROOK'S CORNER BOOK PRIZE 2016
'This is a great love story' Edmund White, author of A Boy's Own Story

Wendell Wilson, a taxidermist, and Frank Clifton, a veteran, meet after the Second World War. But, in this declining textile town in a southern US state, their love holds real danger. Severing nearly all ties with the rest of the world, they carve out a home for themselves on the outskirts of town. For decades, their routine of self-reliant domesticity – Wendell's cooking, Frank's care for a yard no one sees, and the vicarious drama of courtroom TV – seems to protect them.

But when Wendell finds Frank lying motionless outside at the age of eighty-three, their carefully crafted life together begins to unravel. As Frank's memory and physical strength deteriorate, Wendell struggles in vain to hold on to the man he once knew. Faced with giving care beyond his capacity, he must come to terms with the consequences of half a century in seclusion: the different lives they might have lived – and the impending, inexorable loss of the one they had.

About the Contributor

Matthew Griffin is a graduate of Wake Forest University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He was born and raised in North Carolina and currently lives with his husband in Louisiana, where he is a visiting professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. This is his first novel.

Reviews

Graceful ... A portrait of a particularly repressive period in gay history.
--The New York Times Book Review

Sumptuous ... Matthew Griffin has crafted his characters through the eyes of a long-enduring love, one that encompasses joy and bitterness, hope and heartache ... A novel robust with flavor and brimming with passion.
--Shelf Awareness

Something like a small miracle: a bittersweet portrait of love in the shadows.
--starred review, Booklist

Griffin's lush prose lends an aura of a dream.
--The Rumpus

Forceful ... A compassionate portrait of a lifelong love that will linger with readers.
--Publishers Weekly

A hopeful plea delivered through fiction that same-sex couples might grow old peacefully together, enjoying the same freedoms as their straight counterparts. But Hide can't be reduced to a social-justice tale, or one of love between gay men. It's a story about the kind of love that endures beyond youth, strength and memory. It's about the preciousness of the lives couples build together and the heartbreak of losing them.
--Chapter 16.org/Knoxville News -Sentinel