Tony D\'Marino lives a seemingly charmed existence.
Cancelmo\'s prose so vividly paints Tony\'s lived experience that it was only at the end did I fully appreciate the depth and complexity.
Tony\'s story toggles between the \'70s and the 2010s, but its dialogue with race, post-binary gender identities and desire, and socio-economic disparities are every bit as compelling today.
His quest to fully apprehend what happened becomes a passionate search for lost loves and a dormant craving for new ones.
When he returns to Detroit years later, his suspense-filled investigation stirs memories of traumas endured in quiet desperation -the shadows of childhood sexual abuse and the confusion of an unacknowledged love derailed by gun violence.
In vivid prose and lively dialogue, Cancelmo shines a light on a specific culture moment that continues to resonate today.-Carol Wallace, author of Our Kind of People Tony, a financially successful middle-aged man, mired in alcohol, social isolation, and tenacious survivor guilt, delves into the tragedy that shattered his exciting but chaotic college years in the racially torn, sexually liberated Detroit of the mid-\'70s.
His complex and likable characters grapple with the big issues: forming an identity, the nature of home, the fault lines of race in our culture. -Kirkus Reviews Joe Cancelmo\'s deft and absorbing Detroit Unrequited investigates the challenges of growing up in the turmoil of 1970s Detroit.
Detroit is a fascinating city-whether in the 1970s, the 2010s, or today-and Cancelmo evokes it with urgency and tenderness over the course of this novel.
It is a tale of lives derailed by trauma and attempts at resolution and reinvention for the characters and the post-apocalyptic city.
Detroit Unrequited is part psychological mystery and part historical reflection.
He\'s driven to answer essential questions about the murder and face conflicts around race, maleness, and sexuality left unresolved.
Tony\'s return to an officially bankrupt, dystopian Detroit begins with a series of uncanny experiences, with old and new relationships.
He\'s desperate to reconnect with parts of himself left unfinished when his best friend Roman was left dead by his side.
But images of post-apocalyptic Detroit have triggered a traumatic memory from his college years in the \'70s-memories he can\'t live with or without.
From immigrant roots to a Harvard MBA, he\'s amassed a formidable stock portfolio and owns a sprawling Soho loft with Hudson River views.
Tony D\'Marino lives a seemingly charmed existence
