Böcker av Anthony Timiraos

Only Love Lasts is a work of fiction that highlights multi-generational, multi-cultural, and multi-family stories about love and disappointments. Six decades of life experiences began in the mid-1960s, just before two high school students, Randy Jensen and Stephen Porter, graduated from their respective schools 150 miles apart. They independently acknowledged their sexual orientation and moved to attend different universities in the Boston area. They met at a private cocktail party hosted by a popular Boston gay couple, fell in love, and experienced a healthy, active, open relationship. Their explicit sexual encounters with others, some of them anonymous, during their college days in the Boston area and in Connecticut after graduation became the topic of conversations between each other and their friends. Randy and Stephen loved to share their detailed stories of random sex with strangers, and their friends loved to listen. Unbeknownst to the two lovers, a forced sexual experience between a young female classmate and Randy Jensen shortly before high school graduation resulted in a pregnancy. Twenty-five years later, they were informed that Randy was the father of a baby girl, Alice, who was now close to 25 years old. They are faced with a difficult decision - reach out to Alice or ignore a new relationship.Love, sex, drugs, death, incarceration, and happiness are just some of the experiences intertwined with multiple families in search of a better life. The story introduces us to the Sanchez family, who were forced into a dangerous and devastating border crossing in pursuit of safety and a home to raise a family. We learned about Louise McCawley, an Irish immigrant who witnessed the loss of coworkers to the horrors of terrorism. Then there was Linda Peterson's quest to return home with an old boyfriend, which cost them their lives while her girlfriend, Sandra Brooks and her boyfriend are sentenced to ten years in prison for kidnapping and robbery. The lessons learned from mistakes, personal tragedies, and accomplishments define the characters in the story. Nobody is exempted.A new generation surfaces with the love affair of two young gay men, Max Edwards, and Enrique Sanchez, who look to emulate the love, dedication, and open relationship Stephen and Randy shared during their lifetime. Everyone looks for answers they hope to find in front of their eyes. Max and Enrique seek guidance from the life Randy and Stephen experienced. They contemplate and observe the outside world from the safety of their homes as they search for answers. All of them are looking at the ever-changing landscape they see from their window. Some realize that, contrary to a changing landscape, only love lasts beyond their lifetime.

A photographic tapestry of our diverse planet

The current international media coverage of immigrants risking their lives to emigrate to a free country makes my personal story meaningful, educational, and relevant. A cruise to Cuba during the Christmas holidays of 2018 brought me back to my childhood when my family was being forced to adapt to a communist revolution. Then came the disappointment of a failed citizens revolt that attempted to return the country to a democracy, the subsequent raid by armed soldiers of my family's home and the eventual arrest of my father without cause. These were only a few of the events that forced my family to plan our exodus to the United States.At the age of 8, I was sent to the U.S. alone with my brother under a program coordinated by the Catholic Charites and the U.S. State Department. Operation Pedro Pan is the largest mass exodus of children in the Western Hemisphere. We were welcomed to a new homeland by a network of generous religious organizations, corporations, private citizens, and a country that had empathy for families seeking asylum from restricted and dangerous societies. I had to live in numerous locations including a regretful stay in an orphanage for troubled young boys from broken families who could not be placed in foster homes. While I was still separated from my family, I experienced the horrors of a close encounter with nuclear war.My book combines my experience in Cuba during the cruise, my recollections as a child, and how political events and decisions made by the Cuban, U.S. and Soviet Union governments during that time changed the course of history and affected my family directly. I wrote this book because history is important and should have a significant place in our education system. Without it, we have no platform from which to leap ahead. I wrote this book because new generations should have access to roads others have paved in the past that perhaps have made life just a bit better for everyone. I wrote this book in hopes that readers take what they can, continue to build their own path and distance themselves from mistakes of the past.