True: A Novel
Cecil Donald Leighton, Jr.
Apr 2025 · Divine Comedy: A Native American Coming-of-Age Story Book 1 · Cecil Donald Leighton, Jr.
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True is the author’s debut novel, a suburban American Indian coming-of-age story set in Tours, France in 1985, whose theme is self-discovery. Despite being influenced by the antecedent literary landmarks in this particular genre of literature, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise, Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, John Knowles’ Paragon, and Bret Easton Ellis’ Less Than Zero, Cecil Donald Leighton, Jr.’s coming-of-age novel is strikingly different, if not totally unique, in many respects, in that it memorializes what it was like to attend Stanford University and study abroad in France, as an assimilated mixed-blood Lakota Catholic preppy, in the mid-1980’s. In True, the main character of Tom Spotted Tail Augustine Stearns, a child of de jure desegregation and the federal American Indian policy of relocation (from reservations to seven U.S. cities), hails from the southeast industrial suburbs of Los Angeles, in decline throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s, due to industrial off-shoring, reduced household income, middle-class White flight, and population replacement. Growing up amidst such radical economic, demographic, societal, and cultural change, Tom finds stability in his topsy-turvy world in the truths, beauty, and grace of Catholicism, finding the old timeless expression of it more attractive than the new. In addition, Tom is drawn to the surprisingly Christian-themed lyrics of English, Scottish, Irish, and Australian post-punk bands, whose members, like Tom, hail from industrial cities, populations, societies, and cultures in decline. Not surprisingly, Tom can be found, throughout the pages of this story, indeed, from the very first to the very last, listening to their music on his 1980’s Sony Sports Walkman, when he is not listening to classical music, opera arias, or Gregorian chant. Living as an American abroad, with the fuller, fairer, and more impartial view of all things American that comes with such geographic objectivity, Tom is forced to face and address, through his traditional gentleman’s education and postconciliar Catholic faith, the pressing issues of his day, concerning race, class, religion, nationality, sexuality, and AIDS, especially as they relate to his everyday experience, moral formation, and personal identity. In the course of his Stanford-in-Tours studies, weekend clubbing, day trips to Paris, collegiate friendships, sexual temptations, and falling in love, not to mention his Grand Tour of Italy and other travels, Tom journeys inward and, in the process, comes face to face with what it means to be true.
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About the author
Cecil Donald Leighton, Jr. is an American writer of Catholic-themed fiction and nonfiction. He holds an A.B. from Stanford University in English and French Literature. He spent his junior year at Stanford studying French and French fiction, drama, and poetry in Tours, France, and also toured Britain and Europe, including their great churches and cathedrals, such as St. Paul’s Cathedral, Notre Dame Cathedral, Chartres Cathedral, Asam Church, Duomo Cathedral, and St. Peter’s Basilica. He lives in suburban Los Angeles, California.
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