Simple Simon (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781477624999)

Winner - IndieReader Discovery Award for LGBT Fiction
Finalist - ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year (Gay & Lesbian Fiction)

Simple Simon, the second novel in the Powell Legacy Series, finds Simon Powell newly sober and struggling to confront the truth he has spent years avoiding. Supported by his partner Thad, who visits him throughout rehab, and urged on by a perceptive counselor, Simon begins to unravel the story he has never spoken aloud.

His account reaches back to a childhood marked by secrecy and shame, then to the decade he spent as a rising leader in Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, convinced that obedience and devotion could cure what he feared most about himself. As he digs deeper, the confident façade he once presented gives way to the compromises and self-denial that shaped his life.

During his years serving the Church in Los Angeles, amid Reverend Moon's high-profile legal troubles, Simon is gradually drawn into the city's nightlife. There he meets Lyle, a streetwise young man whose unvarnished honesty forces Simon to see the emotional costs of the life he has built around suppression.

Told with clarity and emotional resonance, Simple Simon is a story of disillusionment, awakening, and the first fragile steps toward self-acceptance. As Simon prepares to leave rehab, supported by Thad's steadiness, he knows that sobriety alone will not be enough. To build a life of his own choosing, he will need truth, courage, and the willingness to let go of the stories that have defined him.