King of Angels is the coming-of-age story of Benjamin Rothberg, a 12-year-old master of "shape-shifting," of changing identities while steadfastly grasping the unique features of his own. The child of a marriage between a handsome northern Jewish father and a classic-WASP-beauty southern mother, Benjamin must change identities from Jewish to none-Jewish, from being a smart, precocious self-aware kid to masquerading and "passing" as a "regular guy" boy, from growing into a sexually curious (and possibly gay) young man to experiencing a fragile adolescent innocence, almost in love with a pretty girl. Set in Savannah, Georgia, during the tumultuous Kennedy years, King of Angels explores the role of Southern Jews in the still-segregated South, the explosive race relations and racial consciousness of this era, and the emergence of a genuine gay community with its own honest, outsider viewpoint. It is also a realistic story of the underground world of boys who must fool their parents and each other in order to achieve any form of unguarded closeness. As a "half-Jew" attending Holy Nativity, a Catholic military school in Savannah, Benjy also becomes aware of many forms of seduction and attraction: the seductions of a secret sexual life in the school, the seductions of his own heart taken with a handsome Puerto Rican male student, and the attractions of the Spirit in all of its revealed forms. This is a novel about the genesis of identity and belief itself, in a questioning heart and questioning time, while growing up in the changing South in the early 1960s.

"King of Angels might be compared to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, substituting the turbulent 1960s with Lee’s depression-era setting and replacing Catholic-Jewish antagonism and homophobia for the race relations that drive To Kill a Mockingbird. Both novels take place in distinct areas in the Deep South. Both novels feature a young queer narrator who recognizes that they must figure out the secretive adults and  hypocrisy in their community before they can take their place in the racist or homophobic world around them . . .  A number of conflicts in King of Angels clearly describe the growth of a young boy in a difficult environment. Benjy’s acknowledgment of his gayness is measured and feels authentic, especially when he tries to discern what he is actually feeling rather than how he’s expected to act. His religious confusion is also realistic, forcing him to face contradictions that only a more mature person could be expected to settle.

"While contemporary readers may recognize Scout’s early queerness in To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee made Scout too young for a conscious sexual awakening. By making the narrator of King of Angels a slightly older gay boy, Brass introduces a twist to the Southern coming of age story. As Benjy unravels the murder mystery at the center of King of Angels, he discovers truths inside himself that guide his decision to do the right thing and that transcend both his Jewish legacy and his recent Catholic coaching." Howard Williams in Lambda Literary Foundation Newsletter.