Nearness of You/Sorrow of the Madonna

This long sought after lesbian novel by Master Author Red Jordan Arobateau is now available to the public! Originally contracted by Masquerade Books, Richard Kasak decided to publish COME WITH ME LUCY instead. If you like big reading this 586 page novel, THE NEARNESS OF YOU/SORROW OF THE MADONNA is for you. Excepts of it have appeared in Karen Tulchinskis fabulous anthology Hot & Bothered. It’s a tale of mixed race butch Sonny Zapatta (Puerto Rican/white) and the two loves of her life, two wives, high femmes Foxy & Kitty.

"It all begins and ends with females. Females bringing males into the world, then taking them to the grave.--More of the Sorrow. Females who live all their lives in the shadow of fear. Sonny knew the Devil--he brings tears. All she knew of those weeks in late Autumn of that year approaching Millennium--2000 AD-- was that she had been searching through the streets of San Francisco for herself. Like an archeologist through potsherds and relics and old bones; wounds and grief’s and bits & pieces of the past. it was a struggle from sun up to sun down. A dyke a humanbeing, an aging biological female with all her aches and complaints. Walking the SOMA in circles in the fog, with the clock in the modernistic belltower a reminder of the urgency of time."

Subtitle on the cover of this books reads: A Religious Lesbian Novel. It does have some spirituality: "Ultimately it was not the callous nights of sexual passion or SM flogging with black whips (& the cat-of-9-tails of preference)-- but love, shown through their loyalty. Romance, friendship, sex, nasty acts, and beyond this--agape--a gift from God. Love--a gift of pure gold--not to loose this." In this large novel even Mother Teresa makes a appearance. Don’t get the wrong idea, it has a lot of hot sizzling sex scenes as well. It’s both! There are discussions of her mixed-race status: "Dark brown--curly hair, perpetually tanned skin; could be Italian, or Indian or Greek. ‘I can be anything. When I was a kid, each time I ran away from that home I was sent to foster care and raised there for months--as a white. I’m nothing... I’m nothing.."

"The Madonna must have saw her crying. Sitting all alone. Bitterly thinking; ‘there must be a way to take care of our needs, I seen too many lesbians crying over their needs. Unmet. "--Because by Her Grace, this woman, Foxy came to brighten up Sonny’s dark hours. Sonny one so blue, I love you. The Madonna must have saw her crying inside; underneath the stern face, scuttling down darkened streets at night between her house & the gay bar...." There are the fallen times; her brief affair with Wayne when she is homeless, and sex work at the lowest period of her life. Currently, Sonny works a demanding job as a post office mail handler at the San Francisco postal facility. When suddenly... the angst begins... as she is alternately tiered, fearful, angry & triumphant! & searching-- eternally searching...

Red Jordan Arobateau lifts this novels opening line from Dickens: "it was the best of times and the worst of times," ... and then, continues in True Arobateau Style--- "when Sonny wanted to XXXX so bad she could taste it."

It’s a fascinating view on a demimonde of lesbian life, a hustlers life. The world of hard butch dike Sonny Zapatta.

Book Review provided by RED JORDAN PRESS, 2005