Venus Envy (novel)

Mary Frazier Armstrong, known to all as "Frazier", is a successful and beautiful 35-year-old art gallery owner. When she is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and is told she has only hours left to live, she decides it is time to let everyone know what she really thinks. She writes a series of brutally honest letters to friends and family, and because she'll be dead by the time she reads them, she also tells her deepest secret: She's a lesbian.

When the letters arrive, chaos and pandemonium ensue in her hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia, peaking with the news that Frazier is not dying after all. As the society around her seeks to excoriate her for her sexual identity and those close to her are afraid to be painted with the same incriminating brush, only her father, brother, eccentric aunt, assistant and closest friend Billy stick by her. When the pressure grows too great, Frazier escapes, with the help of an accidental electric shock, to a fantasy visit into a 17th-century painting of Mount Olympus, only to wake up in the arms of the stunning and bisexual goddess Venus, and gets to hang out with the ancient, wiser goddesses and gods.

• Mary Frazier Armstrong: A woman of wealth and social position, who creates a furor among her family and friends when she tells them exactly what she thinks of them, under the mistaken impression that she is on her deathbed.
• Libby Armstrong: Frazier's mother, whose bitterness has poisoned her daughter's life.
• Carter Armstrong: Frazier's brother, a sensitive, alcoholic, "redneck" type, whose self-destructiveness is a counterpoint and by-product of Frazier's success
• Ann: Frazier's secret romantic partner, who has a growing grudge regarding the limitations of their hidden life.
• Billy Cicero: Frazier's outrageous gay best friend.
• Mandy: Frazier's assistant at the art gallery, whose exhortation, "Don't die a stranger, Tell the people you love who you are" sets the comic train wreck in motion.