The Backlot Gay Book Forum discussion

Carved in Bone (Henry Rios #8)
By Michael Nava
Spring 2019 by Persigo Press
Five stars

“So, you too should love the stranger, for that is what you were in the land of Egypt.”

The real difference between this review and the other seven I’ve written for Michael Nava’s novels is that this time the author asked me to read and write about his latest book. How was he to know that I would have bought and reviewed the book anyway?

In reading over my other reviews, I found two recurring themes: my own identifying with both Henry Rios and Michael Nava; and the fact that these books made me cry. Nava and I are the same age; and in “Carved in Bone,” Henry Rios and Bill Ryan are the same age. The crying part (about which I feel no shame) is due to the fact that I’m a happy-ending addict, and there are no happy endings in Nava’s books, really. There is more to it than that, however, because Nava’s intention is to cast light on the pain and alienation that was such an integral part of the experience of our generation of gay men in America. Nava knows what he’s doing, and he’s good at it. For any gay man who survived the 1980s, it hurts.

Chronologically, “Carved in Bone” is an insertion early on in the Henry Rios series, set after “Lay Your Sleeping Head” in 1984. In fact, there are parallel story arcs here. One follows Henry Rios in San Francisco in 1984, scrabbling for extra work by taking on a life insurance investigation (shades of David Brandstetter). The other tracks Bill Ryan from his arrival in San Francisco in 1971 until his life intersects with Henry Rios’ in 1984. The year 1984 was not a good year to be gay in San Francisco, and I can only wonder if the use of the year of George Orwell’s famous book title was not purposeful. I remember 1984, and we all spent a lot of time thinking about Orwell in the time of Ronald Reagan.

Rios is a great storyteller, and the secondary characters who shine brightest in this dark narrative – the flamboyant, redheaded Waldo, and the guileless teenaged Nick – felt real enough to make me forget that this is a mystery and not a memoir. As the story unfolded, and I began to see where Nava was taking me, I confess it got more difficult. Nava seems to want you to figure out the mystery just a tiny bit before Henry Rios himself does, and to be startled by little twists in the plot at the very moment he is. There is a visceral connection between the reader and the characters in the book – at least for readers like me.

Shame, fear, love, hate. There is not a lot of joy in this book – and yet, what joy Nava allows us is sublime, and all the more powerful for its ephemerality. The only real light of hope that shines through is Henry Rios himself – undergirded by the fact that it is 2019 and we know the historic trajectory of the plague and the fight for LGBT rights. This book seems to illustrate Henry Rios’ first resurrection, the moment when his shame turns to strength – I refer to it in another review as a superpower. This is the origin story – not the back story – of the Henry Rios who will go through hell again and again in the future books of this series and survive.

At the end of the book, Henry Rios goes to Washington to see the AIDS quilt spread out on the Mall. It is a moment that, like many others, moved me to tears, but not just because of the plot point it makes. My partner (now husband) and I made that pilgrimage to see that quilt, and I remember walking through those endless rows of handmade cloth memorials, weeping for thousands of people we didn’t know, overwhelmed by the enormity of the destruction to our people.

I am so grateful for Michael Nava and his gift.