Befriending a colorful group of individuals who run the college newspaper, seventeen-year-old Nathan Reed pursues his dream of becoming a writer, until he discovers the emotional penalties of growing up and expressing his homosexuality. Reprint.

Joseph Hansen has been praised by The New York Times as "one of the best we have" and by the Boston Globe as among "our finest writers." Known for his bestselling Dave Brandstetter series, Hansen here tells a richly atmospheric story of a young homosexual man's coming of age. Nominated for a Lambda Literary Award.

Jack of Hearts and Living Upstairs (Lambda Award, 1993) chronicled the times of young writer-to-be Nathan Reed in the early 1940s. In The Cutbank Path, it's 1952, and Nathan, bright, talented, funny, but not too smart about life, is living happily with school-teacher Steve Schaffer in a shacky little house in the Hollywood hills, among a crowd of odd but friendly neighbors. But Joe McCarthy has the whole country running scared and Steve loses his job. Nathan fights to wangle it back for him. Then, just as the worst seems over, he gets the shock of his life.