I Dreamed I Saw Augustine by Ryan Schulte

Description

I Dreamed I Saw Augustine
by Ryan Schulte
Paperback | ISBN: 1608644235

Tender, searching, and emotionally expansive, I Dreamed I Saw Augustine is a luminous coming-of-age novel about queer desire, memory, loneliness, and the lifelong struggle to belong in a world shaped by absence.

Calvin Marks is young, half-closeted, restless, and increasingly untethered from the stories meant to guide him. His father’s nostalgic reflections on old romances and history lessons no longer offer the clarity they once did. In the uneasy aftermath of 9/11, with familiar social structures beginning to fracture, Calvin drifts through hookups, longing, and emotional confusion, searching for language capable of explaining both intimacy and isolation.

During a summer in Williamsburg with his cousin Alexa, Calvin meets Gus and is drawn into a chaotic orbit of musicians, nightlife, friendship, and fragile connection. In Gus’s world of faded ambition and emotional uncertainty, Calvin glimpses the possibility that adulthood may not simply be a slow surrender to disappointment and loss.

But time moves forward in complicated ways.

Fifteen years later, Calvin returns to New York carrying the lingering ghosts of former lovers, unfinished relationships, and identities still in formation. As memory folds back on itself, he begins to understand that coming of age is not a singular event but an ongoing process of reckoning, reinvention, and community. The temptation to retreat into solitude remains powerful, yet the novel insists that human connection, however imperfect, remains necessary for survival.

Written in lyrical, immersive prose that moves fluidly between intimacy and philosophical reflection, Ryan Schulte’s debut novel explores the emotional landscapes of queer life with rare vulnerability and precision. Both deeply personal and quietly expansive, I Dreamed I Saw Augustine captures the strange beauty of yearning, the instability of memory, and the difficult hope of finding belonging amid cultural and personal ruin.

Perfect for readers of literary queer fiction, introspective coming-of-age stories, and emotionally rich contemporary novels, this remarkable debut announces Ryan Schulte as an exciting new literary voice.