School Days - A Novel Book

RELEASE DATE - 22 AUGUST 2023

Sam Brandt is a long-term denizen of Connecticut's renowned Leverett School. As an English teacher he has dedicated his life to providing his students with the same challenges, encouragement, and sense of possibility that helped him and his friends become themselves here half a lifetime ago.

Then Leverett's headmaster asks Sam to help investigate a charge brought by one of his classmates that he was abused by a teacher. Sam is flooded with memories, above all of his overwhelming love for his friend Eddie and the support of his most inspiring mentor, Theodore Gibson.

Sam's search for the truth becomes a quest to get at the heart of Leverett, then and now. The school has changed enormously over the years, but at its core lie assumptions about privilege and responsibility untested for more than a century. And Sam's assumptions about his own life are shaken, too, as he struggles to understand what really happened all those years ago.

"The book neatly encompasses much of modern gay history--pre-Stonewall secrecy, AIDS, today's climate of openness...it also becomes a sensitive evocation of late middle age." --The New Yorker

"Galassi's talent for crisp and moving storytelling is again on display...This heartful novel packs a punch." --Publishers Weekly

"Fascinating...[a] beautifully conceived and written novel." --Booklist (starred review)

"Galassi's understated style and economical prose are well suited to this elegiac story...A thoughtful exploration of the lingering effects of repressed sexual identity." --Kirkus Reviews

"Sink your teeth into something salacious and meaningful with this novel." --Nylon