The Devil and Daniel Silverman

Danny Silverman’s first novel reached #10 on the New York Times best-seller list, but that was 20 years ago. Now middle-aged, he and his partner, Martin, an African-American actor, are getting by on the residuals from Martin’s cancelled TV cop series when Danny gets an offer he can’t refuse: a speaking gig in a Minnesota bible college that will net him a small fortune. Why me? Silverman wonders, but he’ll take the money and run. What can happen? Only a record-breaking snowstorm that traps him under the same roof as the evangelical Christian faculty who see this Jewish homosexual writer from San Francisco as the incarnation of the anti-Christ. Forced to defend all he believes in–sexual equality, human rights, same-sex marriage; dancing! vodka! coffee!–Silverman finds himself on the front lines of the culture wars dividing the nation today.

Best known as a social historian, Theodore Roszak is also the author of cult-status novels such as Flicker, a Hollywood horror satire, and The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein, a sensual retelling of the gothic classic. Now Roszak brings us a hilarious novel of politics and ideas in which the battle for the moral heart of America is waged between a college full of scripture-spouting fundamentalists and one gay humanist who thinks they’re full of crap.

Theodore Roszak lives in Berkeley, where he is a professor of history at California State University, Hayward. The author of 18 books, including the international bestseller The Making of a Counter Culture, he has twice been nominated for the National Book Award. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, and Harper’s. The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein (Random House) received The James Tiptree Award for literature that expands our understanding of gender.