An intimate, captivating first novel that tells the story of a family in southern France whose lives are intertwined with the history of the AIDS crisis—and with the forgotten French doctors who are among the first to detect the virus. Writing is the only way for my uncle’s story, my family’s story, not to disappear with them, with the town. To show them that Désiré’s life was part and parcel of all the world’s welter, a welter of historical, geographical, and social particulars. And help them to let go of their pain, to escape the loneliness into which that grief and shame had plunged them. F... continue