THE SCAR LETTERS The victim of a brutal hate crime, never resolved, confronts his assailants eighteen years later, courting both violence and romance... "A beautiful, wonderfully readable, and uplifting novel of personal transformation and triumph. Warning: the first chapter is hard to read." --Toby Johnson, former editor White Crane Journal "There is certainly no question that Richard Althers new novel, The Scar Letters, transcends the genre of gay fiction, but to label it literary fiction could too easily dissuade a sensible reader from picking it up, reading a few pages, and then sitting back with a sigh of satisfaction, knowing that here is a really good book. "The Scar Letters is narrated by Rudy Dallmann, a gay man in his forties, who was brutally attacked and raped some twenty years earlier, and has lived in semi-isolation ever since. Forced by his longtime and closest friend, Tex, to confront the issue, Rudy sets about in his own quietly determined fashion to reconcile his past with his present and hopes for the future. Rudy is not the sort to assert himself into everything dead-center, but he is an honest man, with himself and others-not a small accomplishment in a gay or any other world. "This is a very compelling story-a universal story-difficult to believe anyone could have told it better. Alther handles narrative and characters like a truly gifted film director or cinematographer. We are in Rudys head, but the camera sweeps, darts, settles, focusing on one aspect and then another of the well-developed supporting cast. Location and action merge effortlessly into memorable scenes, and the often troubling past is filtered through the emerging present leaving narrator and reader (as Rudy says after hearing Mahler) "hushed, drained, somehow elevated." There is never an awkward sentence or a sentiment that disappoints." "Bookreview.com considers The Scar Letters a must-read." RICHARD ALTHERS first two novels are THE DECADE OF BLIND DATES and SIEGFRIED FOLLIES. He is also a Masters Swimmer and exhibiting painter, living in Vermont and Southern California with his husband Ray Repp.