A Humorous and Horrifying Modern Cautionary Tale of How Things Can Go Horribly Awry
When twentysomething Miles relocates to fabulous San Francisco in the early '90s, he's footloose and fancy-free. To earn a little extra money to pay for his bar tab, he signs up to be an anonymous sperm donor, wanking off for $50 a pop. Tall, blond, educated with a masters degree, he surely seems like a desirable genetic choice for breeders. This side gig certainly would help those in need to start their longed-for families, of which Miles, a confirmed gay bachelor, had no personal interest at all. None whatsoever, thank you very much.
Fast forward to the turn of the new millennium, when a mysterious letter arrives one day. A not-so-random single mother on the East Coast, Valerie, who years before had purchased a vial of Miles' DNA through the sperm bank, now has a teenage son. Obsessed with connecting herself and her son with his biological progenitors, through internet sleuthing she was led to Miles, declaring him the father of her child, fully expecting Miles to welcome this news. She also tracked down Miles' parents and sister, insinuating herself and her son into their otherwise private lives.
Shortly before said letter appeared, on one otherwise uneventful night after partying with friends, fortysomething Miles ends up in the ICU after having an unfortunate aortic dissection resulting in a small stroke and emergency heart valve replacement. Unbeknownst to him, Miles had been living with an unidentified hereditary condition, which he had passed unknowingly on to his ersatz sperm bank offspring.
In this absurdist novel that reads like a riveting memoir, with characters reminiscent of the best Ancient Greek and Shakespearean family dramas, youthful indiscretion that seemed harmless at the time leads to unexpected annoying folly years later, culminating with a stalker-mom appearing on Sherwood Hooper's popular cable news talk show and featured in a shocking cover story exposé about those terrible sperm donors in Personsmagazine.
The ubiquitous deep need for human connection at any price and the profound longing to be part of a family, even a fantasy one, will resonate with readers long after the final page is turned.
