Comfort and Joy: A Novel - Hardcover

Ford McKinney leads a charmed life: he's a young doctor possessing good looks, good breeding, and money. He comes from an old Savannah family where his parents, attentive to his future, focus their energies on finding their son--their golden boy--a girl to marry. But how charmed is this life when Ford's own heart suspects that he is not meant to spend his life with a woman? His suspicions are confirmed when he meets Dan Crell. Dan is a quiet man with a great voice. Behind the tempered facade of the shy hospital administrator is a singer who can transform a room with his soaring voice, leaving his listeners in awe and reverence. Ford catches one such Christmas concert and his life is never quite the same; he is touched in a place he keeps hidden, forbidden. When Ford and Dan begin to explore the limits of their relationship, Dan's own secrets are exposed--and his mysterious and painful childhood returns to haunt him. In Comfort and Joy Jim Grimsley finds a marriage between the stark and stunning pain of his prize-winning Winter Birds and the passion of critically acclaimed Dream Boy. In this, his fourth novel, he considers pressing questions. How does a man reconcile the child he was raised to be with the man that he truly is? What happens when an adult has to choose between his parents and a lover?

Praise for Winter Birds:

--Winner of the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters

--Finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award

"I have rarely read anything as powerful as Winter Birds. I wanted to steal it and pretend it was mine, or go on tour reading it out loud...This man got it right, he got it perfectly right."--Dorothy Allison

"I think I will not read another novel this year. Nothing else can be as vivid, as awful and awesome as this enormously powerful book."--Max Steele

"Reminiscent of Faulkner or Caldwell."--Booklist

"Southern landscape viewed from a gay perspective with the bitterness of memory but also with the unwavering, unsentimental love--all this, of course, is Dorothy Allison territory. I can't think of a soldier tribute."--The New Yorker

Praise for Dream Boy:

--Winner of the GLBTF Book Award for Fiction from the ALA

--Nominated for the Lambda Award for Fiction

"Grimsley clearly understands the pain and confusion of budding love...in this singular display of literary craftmanship."--Publishers Weekly

"My admiration for Jim Grimsley's power is widened and deepened."--Reynolds Place

Praise for My Drowning:

--A Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award winner

"My Drowning is magnificent, just masterful. So much is not said and yet we know everything."--Ann Patchett

"Rural poverty can turn people vicious too, as readers discovered in Erksine Caldwell's 1932 best seller, 'Tobacco Road'...My Drowning eloquently carries on this dark tradition."--The New York Times Book Review

"Grimsley's delicate prose and defiant resilience of his protagonist make reading his work a rich, gratifying experience."--Publishers Weekly, starred review