I am not Raymond Wallace

‘a magnificent evening’—The Times, on Miss Littlewood

Manhattan, 1963: weeks before the assassination of President Kennedy, fresh-faced Raymond Wallace lands in the New York Times newsroom on a three-month bursary from Cambridge University. He soon discovers his elusive boss, Bukowski, is being covertly blackmailed by an estranged wife, and that he himself is to assist the straight-laced Doty on an article about the ‘explosion of overt homosexuality’ in the city. On an undercover assignment, a secret world is revealed to Raymond: a world in which he need no longer pretend to be something or someone he cannot be; a world in which he meets Joey.

Like so many men of his time and of his kind, Raymond faces a choice between conformity, courage and compartmentalisation. The decision he makes will ricochet destructively through lives and decades until—in another time, another city; in Paris, 2003—Raymond’s son Joe finally meets Joey.

I Am not Raymond Wallace is a heartrending-and-mending queer saga spanning continents and generations, told with precision-tooled prose, sharply-imagined settings and compassionately-observed characterisation.

Publisher Justin David says, ‘When Sam Kenyon’s manuscript came to us unsolicited, I was immediately affected by the beauty of the writing and storytelling. It pulls back a curtain on the hidden queer lives of previous generations—the secrets, the shame, and the psychological damage that occurs as a result of not being permitted to be our true selves in the world. This vital story of human struggle is not just for LGBTQ+ readers, but for all.’ 

Sam says, ‘In the 90s a friend told me a true story about queer love and loss from the 60s: I found it tremendously moving, deeply shocking, and utterly relatable. In the 00s I wrote a novel based on that story, which remained hidden away until last year’s lockdown, when I plucked up the courage to send it to Inkandescent. The passion Justin and Nathan exhibit is little short of miraculous, and I am beyond excited for this work to be seeing the light of day at last!’