Penniless, AIDS-stricken performance artist tom Shaheen has retreated to a run-down ocean front estate on Malibu Beach to brood over lost opportunities, lost loves...and the disease that is ravaging both his body and his inner self. But one day his past comes calling. Brian, Tom's estranged "golden boy" brother, the despised tormentor of his youth, arrives on the actor's doorstep seeking sanctuary from disasters of his own making. Abruptly he crowds Tom's life with incident and danger, dragging him reluctantly back into the sloppy tangle of human relationships...and awakening within him a dormant, life-affirming capacity for understanding, forgiveness, and love.
writer of Borrowed Time also wrote this novel in 1991 about AIDS stricken artist unexpected confronted with his past...has Monette's usual fine touches of humor and tragedy, without lasping into pathos.
If you are from out of state, or even if you are not, there is no such thing as a house on a "remote California beach", at least not in Southern California.
I picked this up at a Christian Thrift Shop where every other book was a hard-core fundamentalist Christian book, so I guess this one, at heart, is too, if you believe love and reconciliation are the hard core of Christianity.