Trigger warning for references to suicidal ideation and depiction of suicide.
We meet Evander Mills on one of the worst days of his life. He was fired when the gay bar he was in was raided by the San Francisco police. When he was recognized by his fellow officers, Mills is fired. Word spreads and he gets evicted. Now he’s day-drinking in a bar with plans to drown himself in the bay. At his lowest point, a woman walks into the bar and offers him a job. Lev AC Rosen’s intriguing series opener, Lavender House, takes us into a twisted family mystery and, for Mills, a vision of what life could be like if gay people didn’t have to hide.
The lure of a mystery pulls Mills back from the brink—but what really hooks his attention is the fact that the woman, Pearl, said that she wanted Mills to look into the death of her wife. Since this is 1952, legal same-sex marriages won’t exist in the United States until 2015. There’s not much for a former detective to go on. Irene Lamontaine died in an apparent accident. It’s not unusual for older folks to die as a result of a fall. The other details Pearl gives Mills about the sanctuary she and Irene created at Lavender House, where their son lives with his boyfriend and their daughter-in-law is in a relationship with a woman (the son and daughter-in-law’s marriage is just for show), tempts Mills. He’s used to hiding his attraction to men (except for some good times during World War II when the command structure turned a blind eye). The idea of gay people living openly (if only in their own mansion) is unthinkable for him.
We follow Mills as he asks questions about Irene and the other residents of Lavender House, but Mills does his best work when he just lets people talk. This novel feels a lot like a particularly good soap opera. (At least one person is slapped during this book.) I drank up the dialogue as Rosen doled out red herring after red herring, before spinning a brilliantly sinister solution to the case.
I was equally interested in Rosen’s depiction of gay life before Stonewall, before even the Compton Cafeteria riot. While some people managed to live somewhat openly in LGBTQ enclaves or under the guides of “roommates,” most people had to hide who they were or risk violence, legal prosecution, shunning, etc. Mills knows that he can only flirt with and have sex with men in somewhat safe locations like the Black Cat Cafe. These places were only safe between raids, unless the owners paid the police to stay away. The San Francisco of 1952 shown in Lavender House is fascinating, but it’s one that I would never want to see return. I kind of wish I could let Mills know that, eventually, things do eventually start to get better.