Children of Stonewall

Gay people battle homophobes in modern-day San Francisco and ancient Sodom and Gomorrah in this debut fantasy thriller.

When gay programmer Arthur Stevenson joins his co-workers at San Francisco’s Tech2AI Company for a group meditation session after the 2016 presidential election, he has a strange vision of a burning town, which he identifies as the biblical city of Sodom. But contrary to the Genesis story, in which God destroyed Sodom for deviancy, Arthur’s subsequent visions portray it, Gomorrah, and the three other “cities in the plain” as utopias of peace, prosperity, abundant leisure time, and acceptance of LGBTQ lifestyles. In the visions, King Chedorlaomer of the powerful hill city of Elam teams up with homophobic patriarch Abraham to try to conquer gender-nonconforming peoples. Back in modern times, San Francisco’s residents are captivated by accounts of Arthur’s visions when a newspaper publishes them—as is John Wesley the Third, the antigay leader of the fundamentalist “Baptodist Church,” who mobilizes all his resources, including a minion in President Donald Trump’s White House and a spy at Tech2AI, to destroy Arthur, his friends, and his gay-positive message. Fortunately, Arthur’s vision quest gives him superpowers, including the ability to immobilize people, which he uses against various bad guys, including a terrorist and alt-right thugs. —Kirkus Reviews