Solomon: A Second-Chance Gay Romance
Mayelana nale ebook
Twenty years after hitchhiking from Atlanta to DC, Solomon Mitchell has a peaceful life, volunteering at an LGBTQ Youth Center and directing the kids’ choir at church. He accepts his life of solitude and his small circle of friends, and he’s fine—fine!—keeping it that way. When the pastor asks to see him after a performance, he thinks nothing of it—until he sees the childhood he escaped staring at him in the shape of his high-school sweetheart, Isaac Jenkins. Who was supposed to be with him, but never made it to their rendezvous. Running again is the easy answer. Staying and fighting is way harder. But man, could Isaac make fighting worth it.
Isaac, his church’s youth pastor, is on a tour to DC, ostensibly to learn how various congregations have retained or grown their memberships. He already has low expectations and somehow, his bar is still too high. When a friend suggests visiting a church not on his list, it’s his cue to go beyond the rigid confines he’s always lived and worked in. His world spins when he finds Solomon, his first love, literally the one that got away, leading the choir. Isaac still bears a weight of guilt about their separation, and this may be his one chance to make things right. He’s not leaving without trying.
Isaac’s church leaders want him back home and give him two options: return and forget about Solomon, or defy them and watch everything he thought he knew disintegrate.
Mayelana nomlobi
Jayce Ellis started writing as a child (just ask the poor sixth-graders forced to listen to her hand-written cozy mystery), then made the tragic mistake of letting the real world interfere for the next two decades. When she finally returned to her first love (her husband and two turtles, Chompers and Desi, remain locked in an eternal battle for second), she’d transitioned from mystery to romance, and there she’s found her true passion.
Jayce writes about people a bit like her, Black and queer and striving to find the good in a world fixated on the bad. She prefers her angst low and her characters hot—a term encompassing all shapes, sizes, and complexions.
There may be a hint of irony in Jayce’s day job as a family law attorney, but she soothes herself in worlds where people communicate and find a way to work things out, even if there’s rarely a neat, tidy little bow wrapping things up. Because really, where’s the fun in that?
