Stray

A musician is torn between his perfect wife and a young actor in an unconventional, inescapable love triangle. Thirty-year-old Kent McKutcheon has come to Atlanta with little ambition beyond his earnest desire to grow up and be a good person. But after a year of contented, stable existence with his Mennonite wife, Maggie, a defense attorney with a passion for social justice, Kent cannot quiet his longing for Paul, the lover who abandoned him three years before. When an accidental meeting revives their affair, the infatuation they've kept private soon threatens to destroy the public persona each man has created. Paul-a talented acting student-is unhappily bound to an older, ailing college professor and is slowly growing weary of the excesses of gay nightlife. A former wild child, he now craves the sense of family and stability that Kent and Maggie appear to share. Frustrated with Kent's guilt-ridden angst and repeated efforts to end their relationship, and eager to find the love and comfort that seem otherwise unavailable in his world, Paul pushes closer to Kent's marriage, ultimately developing a fixation on Maggie. In a single night that slips out of control, the volatile mix of emotions leads to murder, and all three characters are suddenly more involved with each other's lives than they could have foreseen. And none can hope to escape unscathed. About the Author: Sheri Joseph's short story collection, Bear Me Safely Over, was a BookSense 76 selection and was published in England, France, and Italy. Her short fiction has appeared in the Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Atlanta, where she teaches at Georgia State University and serves as fiction editor of Five Points. Stray is her first novel.