We Too Are Drifting - Book Release at Vespiary Books

Mark your calendars for Tuesday, September 8th, from 6 to 7 PM to celebrate the release of the Recovered Books/Boiler House Press edition of Gale Wilhelm’s landmark lesbian novel, We Too Are Drifting. First published in 1934, We Too Are Drifting was the first mainstream American novel to deal openly and unashamedly with lesbian relationships — yet this important work has been out of print since the 1980s.

Written in spare, precise prose, We Too Are Drifting relates sculptor Jan Morale’s affair with the married Madeline and her love for Victoria, a younger woman torn between her attraction to Jan and her promise to marry the man approved by her family.

We Too Are Drifting has been cherished by generations of readers looking for an account of queer love that is free of any suggestion of judgment or prurience. Gale Wilhelm takes her characters and their desires at face value, conveying deep emotions with unusual intensity. We Too Are Drifting is now available again, along with four never-before collected short stories by Wilhelm.

“Probably the major novel of the thirties to deal with lesbians; perhaps the best of all time…. Exceptional literary merit.” Marion Zimmer Bradley

Brad Bigelow, editor of the Recovered Books series, will talk about Gale Wilhelm’s life and work and how We Too Are Drifting continues the mission of the series to recover neglected books from the past. Talie Wilkinson, a University of Montana student who wrote the afterword to this edition, will talk about exploring Gale Wilhelm’s papers at the University of California and the mysteries that remain about why Wilhelm stopped writing after publishers no longer wanted her queer fictions.