Fellow Travelers

Engaging story; valuable history

This is a novel, but is a well-researched and fascinating look into the world of closeted gays in government in the 1950s. Younger folks today do not generally realize what it was like back then. This short novel teaches some important history while telling a good story.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

A lovely, lilting, and heartbreaking book

This is a simply lovely book. It's only the more profound and effective because it evokes a world, not that long past, but that is so thoroughly gone in virtually every sense, and in ways both to be celebrated and lamented. I think the book is most effective at depicting the horrible constraints of a life lived in the closet, and at the same time in capturing the allure and romance of what was once a very much more dangerous kind of way to love. There are some passages here that rank with the all-time best at depicting the heartbreak of unrequited love. A magnificent gem of a book.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Poignant

If you like historical fiction, you'll love this. Set in the 1950's during the Joe McCarthy era when communists and gays were being 'identified' and forced out of the government, Mallon gives us believable and effective characters to bring the ugliness of this purging home. The odd love story he tells had me mesmerized. I was crying like a baby at the end. And he gives us what I wish all fiction authors would give us: an epilogue!

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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