Will I love Leading Men?

Author Christopher Castellani stumbled onto quite the rich playground when he first read about the life of Frank Merlo in a book he found in a used bookstore.

The partner of Tennessee Williams for 15 years, Merlo was a working-class New Jersey boy from an Italian family, and a war hero, who also worked as the legendary playwright’s personal assistant during the height of his career. Merlo, however, had creative aspirations of his own. He wanted to be an actor.

Leading Men reimagines the pair’s life together in a griping work of historical fiction. Set in the Italian Riviera in… show more.

If there is something written by Tennessee Williams that I’ve not read, I’d be surprised. All I’ve known about his personal life is that he was gay, but what that meant to him, or how he expressed it, were mysteries to me until I read Leading Men, a fictionalized account of Tennessee Williams’s 30-year love affair with Frank Merlo.

Set largely in Italy, it’s filled with dazzling characters and backstage intrigue. It’s also a heartbreaking novel about life in the shadows of greatness.

A book that hasn’t left me since I read it and I’m sure to read it… show more.