Blessed Be

A beautiful young man, dancing alone and completely naked at the edge of a pond, is not what Spencer Hill expected to see. It's 1987, and he has been assigned a ministerial post in a Unitarian Universalist parish in Assisi, Vermont, close to the Canadian border-a far cry from his hometown of New York City. So a "sky clad" wood sprite takes him very much by surprise. What might have been a ho-hum posting in this remote northern location turns out to be anything but that. The good news: His progressive parish doesn't care that he's gay. The bad news? His attempts to make a goodwill connection with The Forest, a nearby Pagan community, are consistently rebuffed for reasons he doesn't understand. As Spencer makes friends and enters into a love affair, he begins to explore the fraught relationship he'd had with his late father. And in his efforts to reach out to The Forest, he uncovers a dark secret the Assisi townsfolk don't want to talk about.

Spencer Hill's fondest wish has come true. Or maybe his second fondest wish. The northern Vermont town of Assisi, where Spencer is the Unitarian Universalist minister, has at last established close ties with The Forest, a Pagan community just east of town, and it's mostly due to Spencer's efforts. In fact, he has established an intimate relationship with one Forest Dweller, someone who had originally viewed Spencer with contempt. And he has earned the trust and respect of the community's elders. Certain that his greatest wish will never come true, Spencer tries to ignore it-until the man he has tried to forget shows up on the arm of someone else. For a while Spencer is distracted by a Pagan-inspired festival he's organizing and by the teenaged Kira, who-despite her parents' refusal to accept her-is "Ralph" no longer. He hikes through the Green Mountains of Vermont with the Great Pyrenees dog, Klondike, he inherited from his predecessor at Assisi's UU church. But soon he can't avoid the questions. Will Donald stay in Vermont with Jonathan Ehrlich? Will he return to his acting career in Manhattan? Or will his love for Spencer guide him? And the real question: What would any of them give up for love?