On January 7, 1980, in the run-up to the publication of Thy Neighbor’s Wife, Gay Talese received an anonymous letter from a man in Colorado. “Since learning of your long awaited study of coast-to-coast sex in America,” the letter began, “I feel I have important information that I could contribute to its contents or to contents of a future book.” The man went on to tell Talese a remarkable, shocking secret, so compelling that Talese traveled to Colorado to verify it in person. But because the letter-writer insisted on remaining anonymous, Talese filed his reporting away, certain the story would remain untold.

Over the next thirty-five years, the man occasionally reached out to Talese to fill him in on the latest developments in his life, but he continued to insist on anonymity. Finally, after thirty-five years, he’s ready to go public.

In the tradition of Thy Neighbor’s Wife, Talese’s landmark, best-selling exploration of the sexual revolution in America, this will be a provocative, eye-opening, and much-talked-about book.


Gay Talese was born in Ocean City, New Jersey, in 1932, to Italian immigrant parents. He attended the University of Alabama, and after graduating was hired as a copyboy at the New York Times. After a brief stint in the army, Talese returned to the New York Times in 1956. Since then he has written for numerous publications, including Esquire, the New Yorker, Newsweek, and Harper...