The Boys on the Rock [Paperback]

Written with uncanny precision and wild humor, this is the story of Billy Connors, high school student in the Bronx, member of the swim team, and all-around regular guy, who in his sixteenth year has to face the fact that he's a little different from everyone else, a little weird.

Though he's sort of going steady with a girl and popular at school, he's always worried that the secret fantasies he has about men would set him apart and make him different if anyone knew about them. How Billy faces up to himself-and his friends-as he discovers the complexities of life, the exuberance of sex, and what it means to be an adult in our imperfect world, makes for a touching, wise, and very moving novel.

This is some of the brightest, funniest, most touching writing about adolescence I've read in a long time. And if ever a book will give straight readers an exact sense of what it's like to grow up gay, surelyThe Boys on the Rockwill. Edmund White, author of A Boy's Own Story

John Fox is a talented writer with a singular voice.The Boys on the Rockis a unique coming-of-age novel. It is filled with wit...and fleshed out with characters rarely encountered in contemporary fiction. Richard Price, author of Clockers

John Fox, a novelist and short-story writer, was a Bronx-native. He died of AIDS at the age of 38.