A Quilt for David

The hidden history of a vulnerable gay man whose life and death were turned into tabloid fodder.

In the early 1990s, eight people living in a small conservative Florida town alleged that Dr. David Acer, their dentist, infected them with HIV. David's gayness, along with his sickly appearance from his own AIDS-related illness, made him the perfect scapegoat and victim of mob mentality. In these early years of the AIDS epidemic, when transmission was little understood, and homophobia rampant, people like David were villainised. Accuser Kimberly Bergalis landed a People magazine cover story, while others went on talk shows and made front-page news.

With a poet's eulogistic and psychological intensity, Steven Reigns recovers the life and death of this man who also stands in for so many lives destroyed not only by HIV, but a diseased society that used stigma against the most vulnerable. It is impossible not to make connections between this story and how the twenty-first-century pandemic has also been defined by medical misinformation and cultural bias.

Inspired by years of investigative research into the lives of David and those who denounced him, Reigns has stitched together a hauntingly poetic narrative that retraces an American history, questioning the fervour of his accusers, and recuperating a gay life previously shrouded in secrecy and shame.

A Quilt for David is described as "a posthumous journal of vindication" by Brontez Purnell, author of 100 Boyfriends. Sarah Schulman, author of Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993, calls it "a stunning homage to people with AIDS."

Justin Torres, author of We the Animals, states, "I found this an incredibly moving book. Reigns deals in hard truths, revisioning one man's life and death, and our collective queer history."

Marie Cloutier from Greenlight Bookstore, Brooklyn, NY, comments, "A Quilt for David is amazing and so powerful, filled with anger and frustration... It's an unforgettable book."

Andrew Holleran, author of Chronicle of a Plague, Revisited, praises the book as "Told in short, occasionally haiku-like entries, Reigns has done what literature should: put the reader into the mind, the suffering, of another human being."

CAConrad, author of AMANDA PARADISE: Resurrect Extinct Vibration, acknowledges, "Steven Reigns lifts David Acer thirty years after his death to show the naked cost of violent, unexamined public opinion around the catastrophe of AIDS. This poetry masterfully documents the tangle of hatred and lies haunting a generation of survivors."

Natalie Goldberg, author of Writing Down the Bones, observes, "This writing is energetic, alive, and uncensored. Through poetry and prose we glean a deep understanding of a life misunderstood and mischaracterised. Reigns goes to the mat to find out what really happened, and with his expert pacing we're right there with him."

Richard Blanco, 2013 Presidential Inaugural Poet, author of How to Love a Country, notes, "One of the most important roles a poet can assume is that of emotional historian. Reigns certainly understands that notion in this necessary and genre-bending book."