My Husband and My Wives

*My Husband and My Wives: A Gay’s Man’s Odyssey* is a memoir of a man looking back over eight decades at the complications of discovering at puberty that he is attracted to other men. The dilemma of remaining true to what his libido tells him is right while surrounded by a disapproving and sometimes hostile society, is one side of his story. Another is the impulsive decision he made as a young adult to marry a woman who fascinated him. This led him into entirely unanticipated territory; he found himself suddenly a husband, a widower, a groom for a second time, and, finally, the father of four children and grandfather of six, though he never abandoned his erotic involvement with men. Perhaps most extraordinary is the story’s happy conclusion: Charles Rowan Beye’s wedding four years ago to the man who has been his companion for the last twenty years.

The remarkable journey from pariah to patriarch is told with an eloquence, an honesty, and a sense of humor that are uniquely Beye’s own. A personal history that is also a history of evolving social mores, this wonderfully original, challenging, life- and love-affirming account could only have been written by the unconventional man who lived through it all.