''Terre Haute'' is a 1989 novel by

Will Aitken Will Aitken is an American-Canadian novelist, journalist and film critic.Richard Burnett"Montreal author Will Aitken revives Death in Venice". '' Xtra!'', January 26, 2012. Originally from Terre Haute, Indiana, he has been based in Montreal, Quebec ...

Gregory Woods Gregory Woods (born 1953 in Egypt) is a British poet. He was the Chair in Gay and Lesbian Studies at Nottingham Trent University from 1998 to 2013. He is the author of five books of literary and LGBT studies criticism, and seven poetry collect ...

, ''A History of Gay Literature: The Male Tradition''.

Yale University Press Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day, and became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and operationally autonomous. , Yale Universi ...

, 1999. . ''Terre Haute'' describes a year in the life of fourteen-year-old Jared McCaverty, a bright and attractive young boy going through puberty in

Terre Haute Terre Haute ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Vigo County, Indiana, United States, about 5 miles east of the state's western border with Illinois. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 60,785 and its metropolitan area had a ...

Indiana Indiana () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th s ...

. Jared, who comes from a wealthy family, is many ways a happy boy, but he is overweight, socially awkward, and gay.

Plot summary

Jared McCaverty has a sexual encounter with a friend, Paul Herzog, but his father finds out and beats him. He buys a gay magazine, but his father finds it and cannot accept his son's sexual inclinations. He then has another homosexual episode with Randy Sparks, a school friend, but his father discovers them having sex in Jared's bedroom. Jared meets Julian Clay, the new curator of the local museum, and a sexually abusive relationship ensues. Jared faces rejection by Julian and threatens him. Julian Clay then commits suicide. It is likely that he did so because Jared threatened to expose him as a pedophile and a rapist, and Jared blames himself for Julian's death. In the closing pages, Jared meets Alexandre, a sympathetic twenty-year-old Frenchman, and the reader is led to believe that Jared will have found true love.

References

1989 American novels Novels set in Indiana Terre Haute, Indiana Canadian LGBT novels American LGBT novels Novels with gay themes 1989 Canadian novels 1980s LGBT novels {{1980s-LGBT-novel-stub