Charles Jackson (1903-1968) achieved international success with his first book, The Lost Weekend (1944), a groundbreaking novel about alcoholism that sold more than 600,000 copies and was adapted for an Academy Award-winning film version. Jackson followed this triumph with a novel that was even more daring, The Fall of Valor (1946), arguably the first major American novel to deal openly with the theme of homosexuality. The Fall of Valor is an unflinching portrayal of a marriage that has faded to a mere duty. John and Ethel Grandin take a summer vacation to Nantucket with the hope of recapturing the happiness they felt in the early days of their relationship. But instead the holiday blasts their marriage wider apart than ever when John falls hopelessly in love with a handsome marine captain. This edition features a new introduction by Michael Bronski, who argues that Jackson's novel deserves rediscovery and a place alongside later classics such as Gore Vidal's The City and the Pillar, Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead, and the works of James Baldwin. "A finer and more skilful work than [The Lost Weekend] ... a milestone in our literary progress." - Saturday Review "A courageous, ruthlessly probing book." - Thomas Mann "One of the best books I've ever read." - Book Week

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Fall of Valor" by Charles R. Jackson. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

Set and written during World War II, Charles Jackson's "The Fall of Valor" is a masterful work that depicts marital crisis and simmering sexuality at a time when most of us might assume Americans would rather recoil from such frankness. But as Jackson highlights, the second war, in some ways, brought sexuality to the American forefront for perhaps the first time. John and Ethel Grandin, together ten years, hope a trip to the seashore might rekindle their troubled marriage. But after meeting young honeymooners on the boat to Martha's Vineyard, John becomes obsessed with the groom, the handsome and burly Marine captain Cliff Hauman.

"Joseph and His Friend: A Story of Pennsylvania" is an novel by American author Bayard Taylor, a prolific writer in many genres. It presented a special attachment between two men and discussed the nature and significance of such a relationship, romantic but not sexual. Critics are divided in interpreting Taylor's novel as a political argument for gay relationships or an idealization of male spirituality. The book was not well received and became the author's least successful and most disliked novel. However, in recent years it has regained popularity as America's first gay novel.

A masterful collection of short stories exposing the seamy undercurrents of small-town American life from Charles Jackson, celebrated author of The Lost Weekend. A selection of Jackson’s finest tales, The Sunnier Side and Other Stories explores the trials of adolescence in America during the tumultuous years of the early twentieth century. Set in the town of Arcadia in upstate New York, the stories in this collection address the unspoken issues—homosexuality, masturbation, alcoholism, to name a few—lurking just beneath the surface of the small-town ideal. The Sunnier Side showcases Jackson at the height of his storytelling powers, reaffirming his reputation as a boundary-pushing, irreverent writer years ahead of his time.