Author: Rotten_Soldier (@the-rotten-soldier)
Podfic: I live in hope (and anguish) that we might get a podfic of this one day. I would have it on repeat, if we did.
Words: 86,000 (complete, 12/12 chapters)
Series: Part 1 of From Reno, With Love
My love for The Reno Cure? Oh, my undying love for The Reno Cure. When I finished it, I wandered around in a sort of daze for a while, thinking there was something I must be forgetting to do. But it was just this world, and these boys. I wanted to live in it longer.
These are such fantastic versions of these characters. The love is beautiful. The friendship is beautiful. The heartbreak is beautiful. The story is so vivid, you can feel the dust and sweat from the desert on the back of your neck.
I love Ed and Stede in this story, so much. Rotten_Soldier writes Izzy as someone I would want on my side. They even manage to endear Calico Jack to me, you know, a bit. It's still Jack...
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It’s the summer of 1959, and classics professor Stede Bonnet is determined to become a new man. He’s made two monumental changes so far: he’s resigned his position at the University of Chicago, where he has taught for his entire career, and he’s left his wife Mary, to whom he has been married for nine years. Now he’s off to the only place in the United States where you can get a no-fault divorce: the deserts of Nevada. He’s checking in to a so-called Divorce Ranch just outside of Reno, where he’ll spend the requisite six weeks establishing residency. After that, it’s off to California to assume his new teaching position and his new life.
It's the summer of 1959. Ed Teach has been living in Reno since he was a teenager. He's a radio DJ, an artist, a handyman and a fixture of the community, particularly popular in the underground gay nightlife scene that is still recovering from the brutal vice raids of the McCarthy era.