A haunting gay love story where grief becomes devotion, memory becomes myth, and a young man must choose between the ghost of his past and the truth of who he is.
With tension and heart in equal measure, Mario Elías’s Beloved Disciples is a luminous, haunting portrait of grief, devotion, and the blurred edges of memory. In a sun-bleached Caribbean town, Simón is haunted by the ghost of his lover Albi, by the weight of family, and by a faith that no longer comforts. Once bound together by whispered prayers and saltwater kisses, Simón and Albi carved a secret world from the shadows. But when Albi dies unexpectedly, that world begins to unravel.
Now, Simón finds Albi everywhere: in the rectory where they made love, in the queer sanctuaries of their found family, in the ache of things unsaid. As his estranged Catholic mother reappears with promises and expectations, Simón is torn between the love that consumes him and the version of himself he’s been running from. Past and present bleed together, memory distorts, and reality slips into something more uncertain—more sacred.
A day-in-the-life tale laced with longing, Beloved Disciples is a fevered meditation on inheritance, identity, and the desperate need to belong. For readers of Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain, Fernanda Melcho’s Hurricane Season, and André Aciman’s Call Me By Your Name, this debut hums with raw beauty and tender, ruinous love.
