One person stands in the shadows, willing to do whatever it takes to destroy them. MERCY MOST TENDER is book one of the unfolding story of Joey Nisi and Evan Matheson. From the night they meet on a dark street in Greenwich Village in 1966, the two men become inexorably and passionately attached to each other. Evan, a masculine and openly gay, well-to-do artist whose life is entangled with shrouded, cold-blooded secrets, falls in love with Joey, the boyish waif in his early 20s haunted by nightmares from his childhood of abuse. In Evan's controlling, obsessive and often cruel love, Joey seeks redemption from guilt that rages through his terrifying dreams and fearful imaginings. Evan, meanwhile, struggles to keep hidden from Joey his secret life. Their story unfolds in the music-infused era of flower power, hippies, free love and youthful rebellion. Joey and Evan come together when gay pride first steps out of the closet to march into the public's eye, as harbingered by the ground-breaking stage production of "Fortune and Men's Eyes" and the damning special CBS report on homosexuality telecast in the spring of 1967. This is their time. This is the beginning of their story.