I’ll Take Everything You Have
In 1934, during the Great Depression, sixteen-year-old Joe Garbe takes a summer job at a hotel in Chicago to earn money to save the farm downstate where he and his widowed mother live. He shares a room with his older cousin, Bernie, who lures him into ever more illegal and dangerous schemes to earn money quickly. But Joe has another reason to be in danger. He is “queer,” which in the 1930s was a slur, rather than a term the LGBTQ+ community claimed with pride. He finds himself attracted to Eddie, the working-class deliverer of the hotel’s liquor, and when he takes a French class in order to spy on wealthy families for Bernie’s burglary ring, he strikes up a relationship (under a fake name) with Raymond, whose lifestyle and opportunities he covets. However, an unfortunate visit to a local gay club puts a blackmailer on Raymond’s trail, with Joe becoming an accessory to his friend’s retaliation at the same time as he gives information about Raymond’s family to Bernie and the burglars.
In a novel full of period detail, Klise explores the moral and physical jeopardy that his sympathetic young protagonist faces. Joe wants to do the right things—help his mother, save the family farm, go to college to make a better life for himself. He’s also an innocent entranced by the big city, where he can be his true self rather than pretending to love his high school sweetheart. He feels guilt for his bad choices, and often his efforts to make things right only make things worse, especially since one of the main things he needs to learn is to stand up for himself.
