I owe Grady Harp big time for recommending BLIND TRIANGLE to me. I would have missed the three hours or so I spent with these three characters who make up the doomed love triangle: Ray Styles, a genius with red hair that he wears in an Elvis pompadour to distinguish himself from the hippy culture of 1967; Tom Laurel, a beautiful young artist two years younger than Ray; and Soledad Paz, a black-haired prostitute but oh so much more than that (she only sleeps with wealthy women). The word "prostitute" has such bad connotations. Mr. Deveny has created three completely empathetic characters who consumed me totally in the time it took me to finish this short novel of a little over 200 pages.As always, one fine novel reminds you of another. I immediately thought of what Toni Morrison says in her latest novel GOD HELP THE CHILD about the harm that parents inflict on their children as these star-crossed characters are saddled with the sins of their parents, each in his or her own way. The novels of Tom Spanbauer also came to mind, particularly his latest I LOVED YOU MORE, another fantastic book about another triangle.As you read this novel, you know that these characters will not live happily ever after. The sense of danger and tragedy is everywhere although you hope against hope that all will be well with these three characters who find themselves in an impossible situation. Since anyone who reads the book blurb knows, at the center of this novel is Tommy’s love for Ray. (Perhaps he would have fared better if the novel had been set in the present; but that would have been another story.) He is in a word obsessed with Ray.Mr. Deveny in beautifully-written prose shows tremendous insight into human beings with all their frailties as he speaks so eloquently about love, loss, longing, and sadness. Here is Tommy after he experiences Ray having a petit mal seizure: “We both smiled, but from that moment on he was made of glass. That’s the problem with loving people. Once they become precious to you, they’re no longer just flesh and blood.” And Tom on what he has gained from Ray: “My father had started out life with no family and remained lost, trying hopelessly to free himself in the only ways known to the abandoned. My mother, for all her precious affection for me, could only present to him a love more dangerous than his own desperation. The two of them were crushed in an embrace from which nothing could survive. All of this understanding had come from Ray. Without his love I would have never seen my mother and father like this.” And one more out of so many. Here is Soledad in a conversation with Tom about Ray: “’He made me laugh so that I forgot I was ever sad,’ she said. ‘That was good. But also he knows sadness. I feel it in his body. That is better. Even though he is rich he knows sadness. That makes him wonderful.’”BLIND TRIANGLE is Mr. Deveny’s debut novel. We can only hope that there are many more to follow.