I Am Not Raymond Wallace

Manhattan, 1963. The city hums with secrets, and Raymond Wallace—a young Cambridge scholar fresh off the boat—is about to discover his own. Arriving at the New York Times just weeks before President Kennedy’s assassination, Raymond finds himself drawn into a world far removed from the newsroom’s fluorescent glare. Assigned to cover the city’s emerging queer underground, he steps through a hidden door into a life he’s always feared to claim—and meets Joey, the man who will change everything.

But this is 1963. For men like Raymond, love means choosing between conformity and courage, between the life you’re expected to live and the one you desperately need. The decision he makes will echo across decades and oceans, until his son Joe arrives in Paris forty years later to finally untangle the truths his father could never speak aloud.

Sam Kenyon has crafted something rare here: a love story that spans generations and continents, told with precision-tooled prose and deeply compassionate characterization. Rooted in real queer history, this is a novel about the weight of secrets, the cost of silence, and the possibility—even after decades—of healing.

“A joyous literary triumph that moved me to tears.” —JACK FRITSCHER

“Taking as his starting-point a real-life moment of queer history from 1960s New York, Sam Kenyon spins a marvellously stylish and often unexpected story.” —NEIL BARTLETT

For readers who love richly layered historical fiction and stories that linger long after the final page.

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