Mercedes General is a series of linked short stories following the exploits of writer Kent Mortenson and his husband, architect Spencer Michalek as they negotiate a life together from their first meeting as boys. Defying anyone who steps between them, they take on the challenges of growing up a couple—including battles with their families, pedophiles, protestors at their senior prom, and unwanted attention for starting an AIDS hospice during the early part of the epidemic.

“Tender and incisive, Wheeler’s stories meditate on mortality and loss in ways both discomfiting and consolatory. Spanning forty years, Mercedes General is also a queer coming-of-age collection that muses on death and fragility in a manner nothing short of revelatory.

Never succumbing to the maudlin or the macabre, Wheeler’s collection charts the painful journey from the uncertainty of adolescence to the hard-earned cynicism of adulthood. ” —Brian Alessandro, author of Performer Non Grata, co-writer of Edmund White’s A Boy’s Own Story: The Graphic Novel, and co-editor of Fever Spores: The Queer Reclamation of William S.

Burroughs. “Jerry Wheeler has written something special with Mercedes General.

The story moves across decades, following the misadventures of two boys who have the great (mis)fortune to find each other so early in life, perhaps before they’re quite ready, and somehow defy all the odds — bigotry, well-intentioned but clueless relatives, and finally the HIV/AIDS pandemic — to carve out their own little corner of history. Ultimately, the story being told here is one that gay literature has somewhat overlooked, and it’s a story that matters.

By turns wise, sad, funny, and raunchy, this is a book well worth reading. ” —Marshall Moore, author of Love Is a Poisonous Color, I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind of Thing, and The Concrete Sky.