Stained Glass by Jamie Samms
“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills.” – Ernest Hemingway
Jamie Samms’ Stained Glass is an emotionally turbulent story of survival, the story of Lawrence McKenna, a man who in the hands of the wrong Dom discovers that he is a sexual submissive, and must afterward cope with what that means to him and how his baser needs change the definition of who he is. Laurie is a man who uses alcohol as an emotional and physical Novocain, using it to deaden the pain in the aftermath of Nash Winter’s psychological flailing and subsequent suicide, numbing himself to the words and memories that continue to claw their way into his subconscious, words that hold the power to break an already fragmented soul.
This is a story of healing, but in doing so, Laurie must first confront those memories, the good, the bad, and the ugly of his relationship with Nash, and find the strength buried within the broken places before he will be able to admit that his submission is not a weakness, nor is the pleasure he finds in the sort of control he desires a defect, even if it means finding his truths with a substitute for the man he wants but cannot have.
Stained Glass is a story of friendships and family, not the kind where those closest to you prop you up and tell you what you want to hear, but the kind where those who love you the most sit you down and tell you the truth, even if that truth is painful to hear and accept.
This is the story of one friendship in particular, one that could be so much more if the timing and circumstances weren’t determined to undermine the men involved. Jeff and Laurie mean the world to each other, but that world seems resolved to bend them to the point of breaking, to the point where their love and their need for each other becomes like a weakness that neither are strong enough to bear until they can repair what’s most damaged in them both.
Jamie Samms has written a powerful and provocative story of two imperfect men, men who are shattered, whose lives are stained by misery, who are struggling to put the pieces of their lives back together so that with and for each other they can be whole and can each be whom the other needs in order to find peace.
Stained Glass is an angst heavy book that does nothing to sugarcoat the reality of the lives of its characters. It’s a raw and candid story of emotional abuse, alcoholism, suicide, and salvation, definitely not for the faint-hearted but most definitely a story I loved.
Buy Stained Glass HERE.
