Ceremonies was written by Dwight Cathcart; this is his first novel.
The story is fiction but is inspired by and based on fact. In real-life Bangor, Maine in 1984, Charles Howard drowned after being chased, beaten, and thrown from a bridge. Howard was openly gay and his murder was a watershed event for that town’s small and scattered gay community.
In the book, the victim is Bernie Mallet and the town is Cardiff, Maine. Beyond that, the line between fiction and fact is blurry and probably immaterial. Cathcart was a friend of Howard, and that probably explains why this book took years to write...it must have been an enormously heartbreaking project to complete.
The story is presented in first person, with a rotating cast of characters. The principal cast is composed of Mickey, Dana, Deborah, Marybeth, Derek, and Luke. Additional characters make a single appearance: Timothy, Carol, Vernon, Craig, and an unnamed patient at a therapy session. Finally, a large supporting cast round out the ensemble. At first, the book suffers from character overload, but eventually you sort them out and get a very good feel for this particular town’s gay community.
The story opens on the night of the murder. You get a fairly short introduction to Bernie, as viewed from Timothy’s point of view. He also is the only witness to the crime. After that, the community begins its long evolution. Each person reacts to the news and makes a decision about attending the memorial service. The media is present and a lot of folks are outed on television. Families, neighbors, bosses, and landlords react badly. Police turn a blind eye. A coalition forms and endures growing pains.
Essentially, this is a painful story. I found the 1984 Cardiff setting to be as unpalatable as the 1970s New York, and that’s saying something. But I am awed by the perseverance and thoughtfulness of these pioneers, risking everything for the chance to walk over a bridge at night and not be thrown in the river below; things that many of us take for granted today.
As important as the story is to tell, I found this book a chore to read. The 512-page plot bogs down heavily in introspection, often presented as a series of questions that are all asked in the mind and thus, rhetorically. Also, the book is very balanced, presenting the community’s evolution from both the gay and lesbian angles. Because of this, the women characters are fully developed, complete with their own issues regarding women’s equality (the ERA amendment was nearly ratified at this time) and women’s sexuality. It’s all important stuff to the accurate telling of this story, but regrettably, these are topics that have never been high on my reading list.
There are also vast numbers of references to other books. At times whole paragraphs read like bibliographies. Perhaps if I had been an avid reader in 1984 and recognized some of the titles, I wouldn’t have felt so pitifully unread. Too bad.
Although it takes forever to get there, the final chapter is worth it. Dana is at the voting booth at the 1984 presidential election and she is reminiscing about Pride back in June, two weeks before the murder. It was there that she first met Bernie. The interweaving of these events provides a great before-and-after effect. Then in the epilogue, Cathcart puts in one final twist, just in case you thought that the story was confined to little-town America.
This book was important, but probably not one I’ll read again.