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Jonathan Lerner's novel Alex Underground

article

Lerner explores politics,
sexuality in new book.

interview

A reckless quest for
justice and sexual identity.

memoir

"I was a terrorist." The long, strange trip of the Weather Underground.

recollection

Searching for the gay literary warrior I might have loved.

    Finally, a novel about the radical underground from one who was there. Jonathan Lerner, a founding member of the Weather Underground, tells an authentic story of politics and passion, idealism and deceit, love and survival.

    It's 1970, the era of transgressive sex, psychedelic  drugs and violent revolution. Alex gives an impassioned speech that incites a deadly campus riot; he and Doug take off on the run. Chicago, Paris, London, Havana. Highways and hideouts, cocktail bars and cruising spots, all-night drives, secret meetings and a bank heist that goes spectacularly wrong. Meanwhile Alex comes to see that his friend can never give him what he really wants. So he uses this clandestine interlude to uncover his own hidden truth.

    Pretended identities, twisted secrets – but coming out gay and whole on the other side. “That awful year,” Alex will reflect much later, “when a benign impulse to remake the world led me to do so many strange and regrettable things.” This is a gripping story of the knotted psychology beneath political action, and one man’s struggle to find his honest self.