$18; Lethe Press; 251 pages
We pick up a novel and enter a world we don't know. Will we like these people? Will we care what happens to them? If we're lucky, when we reach the final page, we'll have gained some knowledge, a dash of wisdom, and a tinge of sadness at leaving new-found friends.
In The Sand Bar, set in the 1980s in Bayetteville, a small Southern town, we find some new friends and a bunch of scraggly folks as well. They're a bunch of gay boozers, many of them frisky, who inhabit a rundown bar.
Arguably, the steadiest character in this engaging novel is the Frear River, which moves through the town inexorably from season to season, picking up its detritus, both human and other. However, the character whose life has the biggest arc in the span of this work is Fred, whom we first meet as a bottle-cap collector lost in his own little world—and to whom we say goodbye at the end as he begins a new adventure.
Folks we meet in this rich novel include Leo, the crusty owner of The Sand Bar; Sister, his friend and barfly; the drag queen Bruschetta ("I've only added to me. I enhance."); Cody, the stud who turns everyone's eye; and the lowlife Del, whom we grow to wish gets his comeuppance.
There are plenty of detailed male sexual encounters for those so inclined. But the heart of the book is the community of bar customers—some drifting in, others being permanent fixtures. We come to love some—indeed crying over the fate of a few—and to hate others.
Keehnen is a gifted writer, in equal parts due to his skills in creating rich characters, planting them in a colorful milieu and unfolding touching and complex stories about their lives. His prose is sparkling (e.g., "He looked like a bow-tied housefly with one eye cocked for the swatter"). He frequently weaves the events of his novel into companion chapters, so we first see the happenings from one character's perspective, then another's. This literary device works well, as we come to anticipate what other Sand Bar denizens will have to say about events as they unfold.
Author of several novels, Keehnen is currently working on Young Digby Swank. With co-author Tracy Baim, he also has written biographies of Chuck Renslow and Jim Flint, and has penned many other notable works. Keehnen serves as board secretary for The Legacy Project. He was inducted in the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame in 2011. Keehnen lives in Chicago with his partner, Carl, and their dogs, Flannery and Fitzgerald.
