IN THE FALL OF 1980, two sixteen-year-old boys in Verona, Indiana, fall in love, are outed and abused in a bigoted community, and commit suicide on the same day, despite the desperate efforts of their few friends. Their fictional story, in Mark A. Roeder’s young adult (YA) novel, The Soccer Field Is Empty (1999), is the root from which author Roeder has created an intricate tapestry of tales of young, mostly gay men, some of whom he tracks through middle age.
Roeder has two sets of YA books about Bloomington, Indiana. The first is about the Verona boys of the 1980s who go to college there, beginning with Brenden (Temptation University, 2011), Brandon and Dorian (2013), Nathan and Devon (2014), Scotty and Casper (2015), and Tim and Marc(2015). One of Roeder’s most moving books, set in Verona at the same time, The Antichrists (2013) features Elijah, younger and very small brother of Tom and Mitch who play football with Brenden in Bloomington. Elijah struggles to make the junior varsity football team and succeeds, only to develop an untreatable brain tumor that quickly is killing him until he is miraculously healed at the last moment by Jesus, who is temporarily a student at Verona High School, helps Elijah’s religious parents accept Elijah’s homosexuality. Why not bring Jesus in?
But I have only begun to sketch Roeder’s world. Three of his best novels are set in Blackford, in southern Indiana, in the 1950s (Outfield Menace2005, Snow Angel, 2008, andThe Nudo Twins, 2013). Three more novels are set in Blackford in the 1990s: Phantom World(2004), named for an amusement park owned by the rock band Phantom; Second Star to the Right (2006), about a rock-star wannabe, Cedi, who joins the Phantom band; and The Perfect Boy (2008), about a very poor, fat, bullied boy who leaves home, shapes up, attains success as an escort, and returns to Blackford to woo the only boy who had been kind to him.
Roeder began writing for a teen-age audience of “gay youth” with stories of coming out and surviving homophobia from classmates, parents, and in particular religion. Throughout most of his novels runs the theme of love and support from friends overcoming the hatred in homophobia. But struggles with the supernatural raise Roeder’s novels above the genre of teen-age coming out stories, and he is a master of the mysteries of crime, villainy, and intrigue. Roeder believes that death is not the end and that the afterlife can be angelic, and even redemptive.
Nevertheless, he constantly emphasizes living in the present because the past and future can bind you: the past because of nostalgia for the good that is lost and guilt because of one’s own evil, and the future because of fear of loss and bad outcomes. So Roeder’s characters come to learn the freedom of living in the present. More often than not, this freedom is exercised in moving from mere lust to love and loyalty. So many of the characters, gay and straight, become friends. The novels set in the 21st-century are celebrations of long-lasting friendships and loving relationships.
Roeder’s novels are narrated in the first person by one or several of the characters in alternating chapters. There is often a sense of tension over whether the author is speaking in his own voice or that of his characters. In The Vampire’s Heart, Roeder successfully writes in the voice of a thirteen-year-old, but there still is a tension in most of the novels. As the characters mature, the tensions lessen.
Roeder seems obsessed with parties and food. In nearly all of the novels there are picnics, holiday celebrations, and large dinners. Much of Roeder’s dialogue is set in restaurants with detailed descriptions of the meals each person orders, including what goes into a sandwich and the toppings on a pizza. Part of ‘living in the present” is articulated by careful attention to the season of the year and transitioning to the next. This is a kind of detail that Percy advises Tyler, a high school author, to use in order to give life to writing (Yesterday’s Tomorrow).
Mark A. Roeder’s Indiana is a literary artifact of fascinating complexity. He has written 55 novels by my count, and some of them are double novellas. Roeder’s characters are interesting studies and the novels stand up to rereading. My advice would be to sit down with a stack of his books before a fire with a pot of tea at hand, as he might describe the scene.
Robert Cummings Neville, professor of philosophy, religion, and theology at Boston University, is the author of books and articles on religion, value, and Confucianism.
