James Magruder'sLove Slaves Of Helen Hadley Hall tells the story, through the medium of a ghostly narrator, of a group of reckless Yale graduate students trying to find themselves in the early 1980s. Magruder draws on his own experiences as a grad student at Yale to create characters who are more obsessed with their messy love lives than their graduate studies.
The book takes place during the 1983-84 school year, just as the HIV/AIDS epidemic was beginning in the United States. Magruder, who is living with HIV, says he wanted to revisit a time of innocence and "unsafety" right before HIV changed the way young people approach their relationships.
Baltimore native James Magruder joins Tom in-studio to discuss Love Slaves Of Helen Hadley Hall.
James Magruder will be speaking about his book at Atomic Books on July 14th at 7 pm. You can find more information about the event here.
