Secret Love [Hardcover]

Bart Schneider (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2001

Enraptured critics praised Bart Schneider's first novel, Blue Bossa, as "a haunting portrait ... a new work of art" (Chicago Tribune), "a heart-rending story" (San Francisco Chronicle), and "superb . . . masterful . . . breathtaking" (Minneapolis Star-Tribune). Now, Schneider writes about a time simmering with social revolution, but rarely explored in fiction: the mid-1960s in San Francisco.

Secret Love tells a double love story. Jake Roseman, a fortyfive-year-old widowed attorney and media darling, whistles jazz as he leads protests with a surer touch than he can apply to his personal life. When Nisa Bohem, a young black actress and activist, recently moved to Chinatown, is drawn to Jake, the two embark on an exquisitely playful and complex romance. Nisa's actor friend Peter also crosses the color line in his love for Simon Sims, the estranged son of a Baptist minister who tries to reconcile his homosexuality with his participation in the Nation of Islam. All four find themselves navigating a strange country of taboo relationships, in the shadow of the Golden Gate. A compelling novel with vivid characters, steeped in the atmosphere and action of the times, Secret Love will appeal to readers who were present in the sixties and to new generations fascinated by an unforgettable period in American history.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The new novel by the author of Blue Bossa is a story of two secret loves, of the kind that at the time the book is set 1960s San Francisco were both afraid to speak their name. Hero Jake Roseman is a civil rights lawyer, high in the councils of the city, who falls hard for Nisa, a lovely young black demonstrator. Since he also has family troubles at home, with two kids trying to recover from their mother's suicide and an elderly, crankily racist father, he does his best to keep Nisa away from them, much to her annoyance. Meanwhile, Simon Sims, a bright young black man drawn to the new Muslim cause despised by his Baptist minister father, nurses a homosexual passion for a white actor, but is also drawn by furtive gropings in the park. The stories of these characters move in parallel, both coming to little climaxes and then fading away. The novel offers a relaxed, friendly read, with a great feel for its time and place and some moving and dramatic moments. But the lead characters, despite nice establishing touches and some well-turned speeches on themes of the era, never seem very convincing, and the lack of narrative drive and tension in the book make reading it ultimately a rather pallid experience. Author tour. (Mar. 3)now renamed the Ruminator Review.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Schneider seems well on his way to making the San Francisco of the 1960s and '70s his own personal Yoknapatawpha County. Not only does he evoke the streets of the city with an almost poetic precision, he populates his fictional world with characters who capture both the energy and the ambiguity of the place and the times. Part of the lure of the '60s and of San Francisco has always been the availability of the forbidden; Schneider uses this theme masterfully but never predictably. In a double love story set against the civil-rights activism of the early '60s, four characters embrace forbidden relationships with tenderness and passion and then must deal with the emotional fallout. Jack Roseman is a 45-year-old activist lawyer in love with Nina Boehm, a twentysomething black actress; Nina's friend, Peter, also an actor, is in love with Simon Sims, who must reconcile his homosexuality with both his upbringing in the Baptist Church and his commitment to the Nation of Islam. Yes, Schneider deals sensitively with all the political, social, and, racial questions these relationships suggest, but what makes the novel soar is the intimacy with which he portrays individuals in love and in pain. Like Baldwin in Another Country--a novel this one evokes both in its spirit and its passion--Schneider uses the drama of forbidden relationships as a way of approaching his real subject: the human heart in turmoil. Schneider's Blue Bossa was among the best first novels of 1998; this one will be among the best novels of any kind in 2001. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult (March 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670894923
• ISBN-13: 978-0670894925
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,009,775 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a great read, March 4, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Secret Love (Hardcover)

It's about time somebody wrote this book that takes a look at San Francisco during the era that the civil rights movement gets off the ground. A widowered Jewish civil rights lawyer falls in love with a young woman who is half black, half white, during a time when that meant a lot of exclusion for her. These characters are very skillfully done, and that whole era is conjured up in authentic ways. The book is sort of a valentine to the real ethnic mix that is San Francisco, not the touristy image it acquired. I read it in one sitting, couldn't put it down. Blue Bossa was a good novel, but this one is even better.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting story with a noteworthy San Francisco/civil rights backdrop, September 21, 2005

By 

Beth Cholette "doctor_beth" (Upstate NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Secret Love (Paperback)

I picked up this book because the jacket description sounded interesting: in 1960s San Francisco, Jake, a widowed attorney and civil rights activist, falls for Nisa, a beautiful, much younger black woman. At the same time, Nisa's gay actor friend, Peter, falls for a handsome younger black male, Simon. Despite this intriguing premise, I found it very difficult to become absorbed in this novel at first. In particular, I never got a good feel for the characters; they didn't seem very well-defined to me, and so I never understood the rationale for their behaviors.

The first part of the novel centers mainly around Jake and Nisa, with the second half devoting more equal time to Peter and Simon. One of these romances ends in tragedy, and the other just ends--ultimately, I wasn't sure exactly what the book was trying to say. However, the descriptions of San Francisco plus the civil rights zeitgeist added interesting elements to the story; there was enough here that I *wanted* to find out how it ended even though I was a bit disappointed once I did.

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Even as a non-fiction reader, I loved this book!, November 14, 2003

By 

Tim Johnson (Fremantle, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Secret Love (Paperback)

I admit-I don't read fiction because I'm a slow reader and I think there's too much information that I'm missing if I get involved in fiction. Having said that I loved Secret Love and am tempted to buy his previous book.

I was very fortunate in that I lived in San Francisco in the years after the setting of this novel ['62-'63] and I highlited every city reference that Schneider mentions-streets, businesses, streetcars, sporting references-everything and the entire novel was one wonderful lookback for me. I cannot judge Secret Love by the standards of literary analysis but I can say that he presented an extremely compelling plot-certainly, in my opinion, far removed from anything that would fall under the rubric of "boring".

Schneider's San Francisco falls into that exclusive period between the end of the "Beat" era and the onset of the more
popularly known "Hippie" era with one of the main players actually getting a job behind the counter at that city icon of City Lights bookstore. A fitting dessert for a sumptious meal.