The Celestial Bed

In his most powerful and provocative novel to date, master storyteller Irving Wallace turns his incomparable talents to the world of sex therapy. Erotically charged, compassionate, and suspenseful, The Celestial Bed explores the way people make love in postsexual-revolution America. Dr. Arnold Freeberg is a courageous, pioneering sex therapist whose dedication to his patients and the principles of his profession prompt him to step outside the law and utilize the most effective tool of all in combating sexual dysfunctions--sex surrogates. Although sex surrogates are highly trained and supervised professionals who guide, demonstrate, and teach people with low sexual self-esteem how to enjoy intimacy, according to the law in many states they are prostitutes. Driven out of Arizona, Dr. Freeberg establishes a new clinic in southern California with the help of his most experienced surrogate, beautiful young Gayle Miller, and a new male surrogate, movie-star-handsome Paul Brandon. But where Dr. Freeberg expected to be able to practice in peace, he encounters powerful adversaries--an ambitious district attorney, a power-hungry evangelist, a duplicitous newspaper reporter, and the violently jealous psychotic boyfriend of one of his most needy patients--who would tear down his life's work, humiliate his patients, and put him and his staff on trial for pandering and prostitution. In the riveting, swiftly-paced narrative style that made him one of America's most widely read authors, Irving Wallace takes the reader behind closed doors into the private treatment rooms where sex surrogates lead their patients through the therapeutic exercises designed to bring them to sexual fulfillment. Readers will find themselves drawn into a circle of extraordinary people dedicated to repairing the sexually wounded, and come to understand the sex therapist's essential piece of wisdom--good lovemaking is first loving yourself and then learning to share that love with another.