Lance Ringel’s debut novel, the critically acclaimed Flower of Iowa, is a sprawling tale of battle and romance set in the First World War. The book centers on two young soldiers, one American and one English, who find themselves falling in love even as they are serving on the Western Front in 1918. Meticulously researched, Flower of Iowa is a grand epic that showcases courage, the resilience of the human spirit, and the transformative power of human love.

Ringel’s latest novel, Floridian Nights, focuses on a very different time, the summer and fall of 1988, and is set in New York City and Florida. The book focuses on a young gay widower who is still paralyzed by the grief of losing the love of his life three years earlier in a sudden, terrible way. Abruptly and unexpectedly, he encounters the possibility of a new start, in the form of a man 13 years his junior. Their story, by turns tragic and comic, unfolds against the background of the AIDS epidemic.