Writing out loud: Novelist E. Lynn Harris's searing memoir of his life as a gay black male climbs the best-seller lists.

With his trilogy--Invisible Life (1991), Just As I Am (1994) and Abide With Me (1999)--novelist E. Lynn Harris combined rich characterization with intriguing story lines of true love, lust, spirituality, friendship and family unity. His fiction also sheds light upon the rarely depicted lives of black homosexual men. Harris struck a chord with millions of readers and rose to the highly coveted New York Times fiction bestseller list for the first time in 1996 with And This Too Shall Pass.

So for more than a decade now, Harris fans have--every year or so--eagerly anticipated sinking their teeth into his latest spellbinding fictional tale. But for 2003 Harris decided to place his own real life under the microscope with a memoir, What Becomes of the Broken hearted. The result is a soul-searing, jaw-dropping and awe-inspiring nonfiction work. "This memoir will help people," says Harris. "The see me now being successful, but it wasn't always like this. Hopefully seeing some of the things that I have gone through will serve as an inspiration." By late July, What Becomes of the Brokenhearted was climbing the New York Times nonfiction best-seller list.

Astute readers of Harris's memoir may find many similarities between the author and the Invisible Life trilogy's protagonist, Raymond Winston Tyler Jr., whose coming-of-age tale includes his struggles with and eventual acceptance of his sexuality. The memoir took Harris seven years to produce and required him look in the mirror like never before. It was important for him to finish it because he says, "after you give so many interviews to newspapers and magazines, you've told your story and I was just tired of doing that."

Harris begins his autobiographical narrative with an episode that will shock his devoted readers: In August 1990, he awoke after consuming a lethal combination of sleeping pills and alcohol and determined that God had bigger plans in store for him. Had the man in question succeeded in killing himself, the world would never have heard from best-selling novelist E. Lynn Harris.

Born in Flint, Michigan, in the summer of 1955, Everette Lynn Harris was raised with his two sisters in Little Rock, Arkansas. Through out his childhood, he enjoyed the adoration of his hardworking mother and extended family members, which provided some relief from the daily terror inflicted by his father. He severely punished the boy whenever he, in Harris's words, acted like a "little sissy." But by chance one afternoon, Harris found his birth certificate and learned that this man wasn't his true father, but a stepparent. And just when Harris would finally meet his birth lather and work on building a relationship, that man was tragically killed by a drunk driver.

Harris took solace in his own private world and excelled in his studies. But nothing prepared him for the anxiety he would experience as a teenager when he began to feel sexually attracted to other young men. Harris learned that he wasn't alone, but the social stigma he and his counterparts bore could be crippling. As Harris's memoir illustrates, being black and gay in America forces many to live secret lives. To win the acceptance of fellow fraternity brothers at the University of Arkansas, for example, Harris and other closeted gay students were always careful to keep up appearances with steady girlfriends.

In New York, during the early 1980s, he still observed closeted gay black men frequenting the an endless stream of dubs, where one-night stands proved the rule and not the exception. He despaired of maintaining a stable relationship with another black gay man. As lovers came and went, Harris wondered if there was a pill he could take to make him sexually attracted to women and, ultimately, give him the life and social respect enjoyed by some of his heterosexual peers. His identity problems were to compounded by clinical depression and the sudden loss of several beloved friends to an explosive and mysterious disease called AIDS.

Nowadays, Harris is a contented man on the move. He keeps his current love life private, but affirms that today two black gay men are more likely to find happiness together than 20 years ago. Meanwhile, he splits his time between the three places he calls home--Arkansas, New York and Atlanta. Yet he also spends a lot of time on the road, attending book signings, lecturing, and doing what he loves most--meeting his very loyal fan base. Talking to BIBR by phone from a plush Beverly Hills hotel room, he says, "My readers are people who have opened themselves up to my work and have probably learned something. As for people's reaction to me, I think people will treat you as you treat them." He continues, "I would say that 99.9 percent of the people that I run into are very warm, receptive and supportive. They say my books make them laugh and cry, and most importantly, that it entertains them."

Although writing can be a lonely endeavor, it's a gift that Harris is determined to share with others. There's the E. Lynn Harris Better Days Foundation, through which the author assists aspiring writers to attend workshops. And this fall, Harris will add teaching duties at the University of Arkansas to his various writing projects. "I want people to see writing as a viable career option. There was nothing in my young age that told me that I could be a writer. And that's one of the reasons why I share so much of myself, so that people can see that this is possible for them too," says Harris. If there's any doubt as to what could become of the brokenhearted, then take a look at Harris's infectious smile, which proves that there's always hope for better days.

--Curtis Stephen is a stringer for Newsweek and a columnist for Newsday.