Common Threads in the Life Series

The Blind Season: Common Threads in the Life, Book 2   In The Blind Season, the second book in the series, the characters deal with another important thread—whether to have children by adoption, artificial insemination, some sort of surrogate relationship, or by raising the children they might have had through a previous heterosexual marriage. Again, as in Common Sons, I set the characters in a time and place distant from today, because I wanted them to have to come to terms with the issues of gay parenting themselves. Although it is probably less likely in the early 1970s that gay people dealt with gay parenting, I do not doubt that it occurred. The Blind Season also deals with other issues of family life that gay men and women must deal with on a daily basis. And that is how much to involve their families in the raising of their children with their aunts and uncles, grandparents, and cousins.   Another common thread that the vast majority of gay men and women experience is the way in which the religion they grew up in relates to them, or the way they relate to their religion. In the coming-out process, gay people either struggle with their religion, trying to find a way to retain it in their lives, or struggle with a way to reject it as being too alien or repressive. So in Common Sons, The Blind Season, and The Salvation Mongers (the third book in the series), I introduced characters who would explore this common thread. Before Stonewall, before Anita Bryant and her "Save Our Children" campaign—and even before the Metropolitan Community Church movement—gay people had very uneasy alliances with their religious upbringing.

The Salvation Mongers Common Threads in the Life 3 A broken-hearted and enraged Kelly decides to pose as a recruit at Lion's Mouth Christian Ranch to discover why his beloved William committed suicide after experiencing gay- conversion therapy. In the isolated high mountains of the desert, where there is no way out, Kelly soon discovers the awful truth. But can he resist the powerful brainwashing or survive long enough to tell others? Or will he inevitably lose his own self-destiny in this deadly game of religious salvation? Ronald L. Donaghe was raised on a farm in southern New Mexico. The setting for many of his novels involves the desert and the mountains. He is a master at evoking the stark beauty and sheer majesty of such settings—but also the unforgiving and harsh side.

The Gathering Book 4, Common Threads in the Life series   Thirty-four years have passed since Tom Allen and Joel Reece met and fell in love in 1965. The one constant in their lives has been their undying love for each other; and second only to that has been the love of their daughter Shara who, at 28 years old has returned home. Along with her return is that of her mother, the four children the Reeces adopted following a tragic killing the the small town of Common, New Mexico, and other family members.   But this was not "the gathering" they had planned for the new millennium. The reason for the sudden gathering of family in the sweltering heat of August 1999 is that tragedy has yet again struck the very heart of the Reece family. An old nemesis and a new friend have also come among the family. One to do harm, the other to avenge it.

Common Threads in the Life, Book 5 The Runaway by Ronald L. Donaghe   In December 1999, following a chaotic summer when both Tom and Joel (a gay couple) were shot by an old nemesis, a desperate teenager named Jared Rory makes his way across a hundred miles of desert in the dead of winter. He ends up hiding out in the barn at the Reece farm (owned by Joel Reece and Tom Allen) only to be discovered by Joel, when he is feeding his livestock.   Both Joel and his "husband" Tom are fully recovered from their gunshot wounds, their daughter Shara has returned to live with them,and when the runaway is discovered hiding in the barn, they immediately take him in. This is their way as a loving mixed family and always has been for three generations.   But first they must visit the runaway's grandmother, whom Jared calls Granny Mack to find out why he has run away. They are surprised at every step as they gain information, including Jared's questionable history with his "grandmother," not the least of which is that Granny Mack is transgendered.

A Season of Family Common Threads in the Life Book 6   By the time the new millenium dawns, Tom and Joel Allen-Reece have been together for thirty-five years.   Their daughter Shara is now twenty-eight years old and, following the near fatal shoting of both her fathers just four months earlier, she has decided to move back to the Common, New Mexico, to be with them. She practically has to give up her potential writing career, and her fathers worry about what esle she might be sacrificing by moving back home; she worries about them. But what none of them can possibly know is what is in store for their family. It will truly be a season of change.   Claude Riggs is a wealthy and powerful oil man in North Dakota, and he makes a whirlwind trip home to Minot to handle a situation he finds distasteful—disowning his only son and banishing him to a remote ranch across the width of the United States, as close to the US/Mexico border as he can send him. There, sixteen-year-old Kelvin Riggs must make his own way and either survive or fail. What is in store for Kelvin is something he could never have imagined—a season among the Reece family and their newest addition of a teen runaway named Jared Rory.

The Rest of Their Lives A Summer's Change book in Common Threads in the Life Book 7   This is the last book in the Common Threads series. This saga began for the characters Tom and Joel in 1965 and ends in 2015—a full 50 years. Along the way the Reece family added adoptive children who grew up married and had children. But more important this is the story of how a mixed family of blood inheritance, adoptive members, and those who come into the family and are invited to stay. In this last novel in the series, we see Tom and Joel come full circle from fresh high school students who are shunned by their friends to the historic public wedding they have in the city park. All the marvelous characters that have been introduced and become part of the storyline in the other six books in the series have important parts in this last novel in the series. We see most of them grown up and the newest members attaining age and personality as the family goes on from fifty years head on into the future.   Some series never end, but this one comes to a stopping place, and any books that come after with these characters will be spin offs and stand on their own. This last book includes a lengthy excerpt from a spin-off novel.   As with any family, there are births and deaths, marriages and divorce, good times and lean times, and readers will witness it all. But there is more to come...