Adam & Yves

Adam and Yves meet by chance over an abandoned piano in Greenwich Village and fall in love just before same-sex marriage becomes legal. Yves is a down-to-earth-Canadian musician, Adam is Park Avenue–bred, and his family offers endless opinions on their budding relationship, even as sisters Alyssa and Alison have boyfriend troubles of their own. Throw in one gorgeous Greek goddess, visiting from Athens and positioned by Adam's family as the perfect match, and free-spirited Pietro aka Treachery, who poses nude, plays piano, and has complicated relationships with several of the characters, and you have a veritable comedy of manners about gender, desire, and authenticity. A fresh, sometimes funny, always heartfelt treatment of love in our time.

My current novel, Adam and Yves, is the story of two young professional men, an architect and a cellist, who meet over an abandoned piano in Greenwich Village and fall in love. When Adam introduces Yves, who grew up poor in French Canada, to his Park Avenue parents, his stock-broker dad makes an unconvincing show of accepting Yves; his mom, an editor at a trendy fashion magazine, refuses to show her hand. But the real family challenge for Adam is his older sister, Alyssa, who is concerned above everything else with appearances, though she has a Jewish boyfriend who meets none of her expectations. Adam has an ally in his younger sister, Alison, a photographer involved with a zany classical pianist who poses nude in her drawing class. As it turns out, Pietro (aka Treachery) has a history with Yves. Tension arises when Aphrodite, a friend of Alyssa, comes to New York from Greece. When Alyssa pressures Adam to squire this "Goddess" about town, Adam must confront his ambiguous sexuality. This provokes a confrontation with Yves, who has always known who he is. The story is set against the events leading up to the Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex unions, so while the book is light in tone it is serious in intent. Adam & Yves should be at the top of the list for sophisticated readers.

After earning a B.A. from Washington University, a Fulbright Scholarship to the Université de Lyon, France, and an M.A. from Columbia University's School of International Affairs, Ed pursued a career in publishing while writing novels and short stories on the side. He has worked as an editor for such publishers as Random House, Macmillan, St. Martin's, and Dutton, and as a freelance book review editor for Publishers Weekly and Library Journal, reviewing books in such areas as literary fiction, politics, and international relations. He is an enthusiastic linguist with varying degrees of fluency in French, German, Italian, Russian, and modern Greek. Originally from the South, he has lived with his family in Manhattan for decades. Adam & Yves is his second published novel, after The Counterfeiter, which garnered favorable reviews from Publishers Weekly and Library Journal.