Outstanding praise for Bart Yates and his debut novel Leave Myself Behind

A Main Selection of the Insight Out Book Club
A Finalist for the Insight Out Violet Quill Award
Winner of the 2004 Alex Award

“Since The Catcher in the Rye, authors have been hoping to create the next Holden Caulfield and critics have hoped to crown a character with that distinction. The latest temptation for comparison is surely Leave Myself Behind. Bart Yates’ main character and narrator, Noah York, has Caulfield-style teenage authenticity. Noah’s voice is more than just honest or original; it’s real…This isn’t just a novel about a boy dealing with discrimination and fighting for acceptance….We don’t see Noah as simply a gay teen or fatherless child. We see him as a character dealing with life. That’s what makes Leave Myself Behind so great.”—The Plain Dealer

"Noah York is seventeen, but don't let his age fool you. Noah's blunt, funny and dead-on narrative will lend this memorable tale of young-but-cynical love a fresh resonance with readers of all ages, gay or straight, male or female. A gripping tale of buried secrets and emerging attractions, but more than that, a story of the familial ties that bind as they grow stronger and pull apart."—Brian Malloy, author of The Year of Ice

“With Leave Myself Behind, Bart Yates gives us both the laugh-out-loud and refreshingly sincere coming-of-age story we’ve been missing all these years.”—Instinct

“Tart-tongued and appealing, young Noah York is living through the worst and best three months of his life. In Bart Yates’ gripping debut novel, Noah spins a tale that is by turns refreshingly strange and poignantly familiar. What he discovers—about the haunted and haunting past, the always vexed relations between parents and children, the bittersweet mysteries of love—will shock and surprise and move you.”—Paul Russell, author of War Against The Animals

“Yates effectively captures the honest, sometimes silly, often tender interactions between his fragile characters.”—Booklist

“It’s not an easy task these days to come up with a fresh and original gay coming-of-age and coming-out story. Give Bart Yates credit; he takes the challenge and relies on other narrative pulls to launch his tale of how his narrator a smart and smart-alecky artist with Holden Caulfield-like skepticism about the world, comes to self-knowledge about his own sexuality, society’s (especially his high school’s) way of dealing with it…and most importantly, how his love for the boy next door develops. Yates is an author to watch and earns an ‘A’”.—Frontiers

With his stunning debut novel, Leave Myself Behind, Bart Yates announced his arrival as a major new talent in fiction. Now, with that same searing wit and heartbreaking lyricism, he explores the explosive, unshakable bond between two brothers and the one summer that changes their lives forever.

Tommy and Nathan Bishop are as different as two brothers can be. Carefree and careless, Tommy is the golden boy who takes men into his bed with a seductive smile and turns them out just as quickly. No one can resist him—and no one can control him, either. That salient point certainly isn’t lost on his brother. Nathan is all about control. At thirty-one, he is as dark and complicated as Tommy is light and easy, and he is bitter beyond his years. While Tommy left for the excitement of New York City, Nathan has stayed behind, teaching high school English in their provincial hometown, surrounded by the reminders of their ruined family history and the legacy of anger that runs through him like a scar.

Now, Tommy has come home to the family cottage by the sea for the summer, bringing his unstable, sexual powder keg of an entourage—and the distant echoes of his family’s tumultuous past—with him. Tommy and his lover Philip are teetering on the brink of disaster, while their married friends, Camille and Kyle, perfect their steps in a dance of denial, each partner pulling Nathan deeper into the fray. And when one of Nathan’s troubled students, Simon, begins visiting the house, the slow fuse is lit on a highly combustible mix.

During a heady two-week party filled with drunken revelations, bitter jealousies, caustic jabs, and tender reconciliations, Tommy and Nathan will confront the legacy of their twisted family history—the angry, abusive father and the tragic death of their mother—and finally, to the one secret that has shaped their entire lives. It is a summer that will challenge everything Nathan remembers and unravel Tommy’s carefully constructed facade, drawing them both unwittingly into a drama with echoes of the past…one with unforeseen and very dangerous consequences.

At once both brutally honest and beautifully tender, The Brothers Bishop is a riveting story about the war we wage on those we love best, the cost of forgiveness, and the necessary pain of becoming fully human.

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