The Blue Star

Robert Ferro was born in Cranford, N.J., in 1941. He graduated from Rutgers University and earned a master's degree from the University of Iowa. In late 1965 Ferro met Andrew Holleran at the Iowa Writers Workshop. He later lectured at Adelphi University. With Michael Grumley, in 1970 he co-authored Atlantis: the Autobiography of a Search. It is for his fiction, and four novels, that he was most influential. The semi-autobiographical The Family of Max Desir brought him to wide notice and acclaim. He was a member of The Violet Quill, a group of influential post-Stonewall openly gay writers in New York which included Edmund White, Andrew Holleran, Felice Picano, Christopher Cox, George Whitmore, Ferro and Grumley. He died of AIDS a few months after his partner, Michael Grumley, in 1988.

"Incandescent angels of love ... an eclectic voyage."Two heroes, reflective Peter and Byronic Chase, indulge their youthful appetites in Florence. Over the next 20 years their paths diverge and reconverge. Chase marries into the Italian aristocracy and Peter pursues his passion for Lorenzo, a beautiful young Florentine. The past impinges on the present as the story of Chase's ancestor, Orvil Starkweather, is revealed - the secrets of his life sounding a counterpoint to Chase's. New York City's Central Park and the imposing figure of designer Frederick Law Olmsted provide a mysterious connection to Chase's life. The story of the two men unfolds in Florence and New York exposing the unimagined and startling connection with the past, and taking them finally on a fateful cruise up the Nile aboard the luxury yacht the Blue Star.Originally published in 1985, this new edition contains a 2020 foreword by Andrew Holleran (Dancer from the Dance).