Baldwin's first three novels - Go Tell It on the Mountain, Giovanni's Room and Another Country - seethe with anger, prejudice and hatred, but the the main force his characters have to deal with is love. Not mild or saccharine but "...something active, more like fire, like the wind" (qtd. in O'Neale 126), Baldwin's concept of love can defeat the horrors of society and pave the way for " emotional security" (Kinnamon 5). Its recipe requires a determined identity, a confrontation and acceptance of reality and, finally, an open and committed relationship. Although Baldwin's characters desperately need love, they fail to satisfy these individual needs, and the seeds of love they sow never take root or bear fruit. Baldwin's fixation with love, especially a love perpetually denied, stems from his past, which the colors must remember. his writings. Baldwin never knew his father. He bore the brunt of his stepfather's abuse simply because he was not his real son. Likewise, Baldwin's characters never receive familial love and are cast out, without support or understanding of love, into a world of hate. Baldwin never forgot his cold, stern, and intolerant stepfather, David Baldwin, and this failed relationship between father and son forms the basis for his first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain. Also fundamental in Baldwin's works is his homosexuality, which plays a predominant role in Giovanni's Room and Another Country. He prefers homosexual characters, who come closest to achieving love, not only because of their sexuality, but because they tend to better meet Baldwin's prerequisites: "In his most elegant formulation, [Baldwin] observed that word homosexual could be an adjective, perhaps a... medium of paper... unit." MELUS 10 (1983), 27-31. Rpt. in Fred L. Standley and Nancy V. Burt. Critical essays on James Baldwin. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1988. O'Neale, Sondra A. "Fathers, Gods, and Religion: James Baldwin's Perceptions of Christianity and Ethnic Belief." In Fred L. Standley and Nancy V. Burt. Critical essays on James Baldwin. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1988. Pratt, Louis H. James Baldwin. Boston: Twayne, 1978. Rosenblatt, Roger. "Out of control: go tell it on the mountain and in another country." In black fiction. Np: Harvard University, 1974. Rpt. in Harold Bloom ed. James Baldwin. New York: Chelsea House, 1986. Standley, Fred L. “James Baldwin: The Artist as Incorrigible Disturber of the Peace.” Southern Humanities Review 4 (1970), 18-30. Rpt. in Fred L. Standley and Nancy V. Burt. Critical essays on James Baldwin. Boston: GK Hall, 1988.