True: A Novel
Cecil Donald Leighton, Jr.
Apr 2025 · Divine Comedy: A Native American Coming-of-Age Story Book 1 · Cecil Donald Leighton, Jr.
5.0star
1 reviewreport
Ebook
363
Pages
family_home
Eligible
info
reportRatings and reviews aren’t verified Learn More
About this ebook
True is the author’s debut novel, a suburban American Indian coming-of-age story set in Tours, France in 1985, whose theme is self-discovery. Despite being influenced by a number of 20th-century classics in this genre of literature, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise, Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, John Knowles’ Paragon, and Bret Easton Ellis’ Less Than Zero, Cecil Donald Leighton, Jr.’s coming-of-age novel is strikingly different in that it memorializes what it was like to attend Stanford University and study abroad in France, as an assimilated mixed-blood Lakota Catholic preppy, in the mid-1980’s. In True, the main character of Tom Spotted Tail Augustine Stearns, a child of de jure desegregation and the federal American Indian policy of relocation (from reservations to seven U.S. cities), is forced to face and address, through the prism of his ethnic identity, gentleman’s education, and Catholic faith, the pressing issues of his day, concerning race, class, religion, nationality, sexuality, and AIDS, especially as they relate to his everyday experience, moral formation, and personal relationships. In the course of his Stanford-in-Tours studies, weekend clubbing, day trips to Paris, collegiate friendships, sexual temptations, and falling in love, not to mention his Grand Tour of Italy and other travels, Tom journeys inward and, in the process, comes face to face with what it means to be true.
Ratings and reviews
5.0
1 review
About the author
Cecil Donald Leighton, Jr. is an American writer of Catholic-themed fiction and nonfiction. He holds an A.B. from Stanford University in English and French Literature. He spent his junior year at Stanford studying French and French fiction, drama, and poetry in Tours, France, and also toured Britain and Europe, including their great churches and cathedrals, such as St. Paul’s Cathedral, Notre Dame Cathedral, Chartres Cathedral, Asam Church, Duomo Cathedral, and St. Peter’s Basilica. He lives in suburban Los Angeles, California.
Rate this ebook
Tell us what you think.
Reading information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.
