In Drought, St. Louis native Scott Alexander Hess delivers a quietly lush and emotionally charged novel that explores queer longing, inheritance, and the hard-won tenderness that blooms between men in the margins. At once a ghost story, a pastoral memory play, and a queer coming-of-self, Drought offers a deeply felt portrait of an uncle and nephew whose lives, though separated by time, mirror each other with aching precision.
The novel opens with Parnell, an emotionally stunted orphan adrift in modern life, inheriting a Kentucky tobacco farm from his mysterious Uncle Willy. Rootless and reclusive, Parnell ventures south, where the land’s silence echoes his own internal void. But this is no simple fish-out-of-water tale. As Parnell settles into the farm, he begins unraveling the threads of his uncle’s long-buried past—guided by an eccentric local preacher named John, and a Sonic drive-thru worker, Darl, whose bright spirit gently coaxes Parnell out of his shell.
Through subtle, sensory-rich prose, Hess captures the contrasts of rural Americana: rustling fields beside neon fast-food joints, repressed lives unfolding beside unexpected acts of tenderness. The novel’s structure shifts back and forth in time, revealing Uncle Willy’s clandestine romance in the 1950s with the same intimacy and warmth that characterizes Parnell’s tentative bond with Darl in the present day. Willy’s love story is particularly moving—tender, slow-burning, and haunted by the threat of violent homophobia. In one wrenching revelation, Parnell learns the heartbreaking truth about a decision Willy made to protect his lover—an act of love that rippled down through generations, ultimately shaping Parnell’s own emotional trajectory.
Queer readers will recognize the pain and beauty of legacy in Drought. Hess draws a lineage between queer men who may never have openly named their desires and those still learning how to live with theirs. Parnell’s habit of replacing traumatic memories with scenes from old movies is more than a coping mechanism—it’s a metaphor for the way so many queer people have stitched identity together through art and longing, in the absence of affirmation.
Still, this isn’t a novel weighed down by grief. There’s lightness here, especially in Darl’s open-hearted presence. He isn’t a savior, but a mirror: in him, Parnell begins to see a version of himself not defined by trauma or loneliness, but by possibility.
Drought is a poignant, understated gem—an elegy to closeted lives and a quiet anthem for queer connection across time. For readers who crave stories that honor both past pain and future hope, Hess’s novel is as nourishing as rain after a long dry spell.
Scott Alexander Hess is the author of seven novels, including Skyscraper, a Lambda Literary Award Finalist, and The Butcher’s Sons, which was named a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2015. His latest fiction—a pair of novellas, The Root of Everything & Lightning— was named a best book of 2021 by St. Louis Librarians. His writing has appeared in HuffPost, Genre Magazine, The Fix, Thema Literary Review, and elsewhere. Hess co-wrote “Tom in America,” an award-winning short film starring Sally Kirkland and Burt Young.
Hess will be reading from his book this Thursday, July 24, at Left Bank Books. He will be in conversation with filmmaker Geoff Story.
