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Able Was I
Paperback
Series: The Elba Trilogy, Book 1
General GLBTQIA FictionLiterary Fiction
Publisher: Dot Dash Press
Published: Mar 11 2026
Pages: 312
Weight: 0.92
Height: 0.70 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
In the summer of 1985, on a post-collegiate adventure to Europe, Grey Tigrett's meticulously planned trip is derailed by an argument with an uninvited guest who threatens to ruin the trip. On the subsequent ferry ride to an unplanned destination, he waxes poetically in his journal to calm himself down.
Before I saw Elba, there was nothing but sea and sky. Then it appeared, small on the horizon, an insignificant fleck just below the vanishing point. On the water, perspectives are not forged from hard angles. No perfect square is centered upon the edge of the sea. The imminence is the same, yet the path, variable. Nascent and amorphous, the island bobs up, down, right and left as the boat stays its course.
Fourteen years later, Grey Tigrett is still adrift. To escape the emotional paralysis of his carefully constructed life, he retreats to the sanctuary of his meticulous, analytical mind. But on the eve of the new millennium, three pivotal events shatter that refuge and lead him back to Elba - to discover whether his sexual awakening there was his undoing, or what will finally set him free.
Able Was I is not a typical LGBTQ+ coming-of-age novel, rather it explores the lifelong yearning to relive the intensity of one's coming of age and recapture the possibility lost in the years since.
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Drew Banks's Elba Trilogy-Able Was I, Ere I Saw Elba, and I Before E-is a multigenerational literary fiction series set between New York, Paris, and across Italy, and exploring themes of identity, exile, and chosen family. While these novels can be read independently, there are several characters and situations threaded through the trilogy that add nuance and texture to each story, especially given these characters and situations are conveyed through the lens of the novels' different protagonists.
This genre-blending trilogy will captivate readers who enjoy LGBTQ+ literature, coming-of-age journeys, historical fiction, family drama, romance, mysteries, European settings, and evocative armchair travel storytelling.
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