Silver Lake

A 2010 Lambda Award Finalist for Best Novel

Robbie and Carlo have been involved professionally and personally for twenty years. Lately, though, their architectural practice and their marraige are beginning to falter.

One fall day, Tom Field, a peculiar young man, drifts into their storefront office asking to use the phone. The men get to talking; Tom is curious but enchanting, and Robbie ends up playing tennis with him that afternoon, ultimately inviting him home for dinner.

The ensuing evening involves a lot of wine and banter and then increasingly dark conversation, and when the stranger has had too much to drink, the two men insist he sleep in their guest room.

During the night, Tom commits an act of violence that shatters the couple's ordered lives—the men are forced to cope with the blossoming doubt and corrosive secrets. Each in his own way, Robbie and Carlo seek to understand the disquiet stemming from their time with Tom.

"...beautifully written, suspenseful new novel..."
-Los Angeles Times

"In his trademark crystalline prose, reminiscent of Patricia Highsmith, Gadol vividly illustrates the universal themes of the stranger who comes to town, the quest for redemption, and the entanglement of deception."

-Booklist

"Silver Lake is compulsively readable, a novel that combines all the suspense of a psychological thriller with beautifully observed details of contemporary domestic life in Los Angeles. This is a haunting book full of both beauty and dread."
-Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, author of Ms. Hempel Chronicles