Timothy John and TJ

This is the first book to read.

To understand the trilogy, you must start in the middle.

Timothy John and TJ is the middle of the trilogy. It is neither the beginning nor the end. It is Timothy John. It is TJ. Both, at once.

The book is a tête-bêche. Two front covers. Two narratives. The structure enacts the story, and the story enacts the structure. Timothy John writes forward from one side. Flip the book upside down, and TJ writes from the back. Two men writing toward each other, their perspectives moving until they meet literally in the middle.

A story of identity, protection, and two opposites who are, in ways they cannot fully understand, two halves.

The structure is the friendship. Thirty-two shared admirations told twice. Once by a man who speaks in open, unpunctuated honesty to understand. Once by a man of few words, whose restraint carries its own weight as he writes to steady the other. Two tellings of the same instant, moving toward each other without knowing they are moving until they meet in the middle, where the reader discovers what neither man has yet said to the other.

One states. The other arrives.