"This stunning debut novel—so affecting, startling, and painfully
clear in its evocations of loss and transience—shows us how it
is possible to love fully the wounded world in which we live and
die. In its explorations of grief and love, Borrowed Light is
unflinching, dignified, beautiful, and true."—Richard McCann
	
      Lisa Schamess's novel is much more than a book about the
scourge of AIDS. It is a riveting interior view of a mind facing its
own demise—in understated language devoid of histrionics.
This is a novel about a particular gay man's struggle to cope with 
his imminent death even as he tries to keep up with his professional
commitments (he's a Washington, D.C., architect) and with mending
his tangled personal relationships. It is also a story with universal
reverberations. The milieu of Schamess's masterful first novel is
David Baum's dying consciousness; human mortality is its theme.

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LISA SCHAMESS, a Dallas native and a graduate of Southern
Methodist University, has made Washington, D.C., her home since
1987. She is a featured columnist on the Beliefnet Web Site,
writing about grief and loss. Her stories have appeared in such
venues as Glimmer Train, Antietam Review, and Alabama Fiction
Review. An early draft of Borrowed Light earned her the 1995
Jenny McKean Moore Fellowship in Fiction at the Virginia Center
for the Creative Arts. As a public policy writer, she has written
extensively on urban planning, historic preservation, and
transportation. Her work has been published in Planning, Historic
Preservation News, and Architectural Record. She lives with her
daughter Mona in a classic Washington rowhouse that needs roof
repairs.