The great secret of Martin Moran's life has become common knowledge, particularly in his hometown of Denver. His Obie-winning one-man show, The Tricky Part, played to rapt audiences last summer and returned for one night this month. In it, he told of his sexual relationship at the age of 12 with a camp counselor, and how that abuse tortured him until he transcended it.

It would seem, then, that there is nothing left to learn. But Moran's book, also called The Tricky Part, is far more than a prose recounting of the play. In fact, as rich a dramatic experience as that was, the book is a far broader and more fully developed experience.

In it, we can see that one experience, no matter how horrific and catalytic, does not define a man's life.

Like the play, the book begins with Moran's visit as an adult to Los Angeles, where Bob, the man who molested him, has become a decrepit ex-con in a veterans' home.

The author is struggling for some kind of acceptance after a torturous youth brought on by the sexual trespass, his own homosexuality and the confusion brought on by the two occurring in the same body. Life is further complicated by Moran's Catholic upbringing, something that was once a beacon and came to feel increasingly oppressive.

Not until high school (a long time for a boy cast into a form of adulthood at 12) did he discover a new church, the theater. There he found, for the first time in years, a solid group of friends. He discovered his own gift and the embrace of adults who wanted to nurture him only in the right ways.

Moran grew up in the Virginia Vale neighborhood, attending Christ the King school, then Regis High School and eventually George Washington (where he found the theater). His memory of a very specific Denver life in the 1960s and 1970s is crystalline, from bike rides to climbing Longs Peak to delivering The Denver Post.

He recalls his first days at George Washington:

"After all those months with Jesuit boys, the colored skirts and ponytails left me dazzled. There were young men wearing yarmulkes who toted basketballs. There were high-tops and high heels, saris and Afros and radios, dreadlocks and sweethearts . . . There were boys with beards and hair longer than Cher's. Elephant pants and bell-bottoms embroidered with peace signs. Here was a catholic world."

But success in high school wouldn't shake off the torment of what had happened to him and who he was becoming. Moran tells unflinchingly and unpityingly of his two suicide attempts, of a mother who once said she'd rather have a dead son than a gay son.

He describes his attendance at Stanford University, then dropping out to become an actor in New York (he has since become a frequent Broadway presence). Even as his career succeeded and he found the man with whom he has lived for 20 years, Moran struggled with his past, watching himself engage in reckless sexual compulsion.

All of the above was, at most, mentioned in the play, but is fully fleshed out here. The result is seeing a man in full: molested child, diligent artist, loving spouse, potential suicide, brother, son, nephew. All the parts of a human being who could never be defined solely as a victim or even as a gay man.

Reading the book leaves out Moran's appealing performance style that allowed audiences to laugh before they shuddered. But that sacrifice pales in comparison with a fuller, richer story of only the beginning of a life.

Lisa Bornstein is the theater critic at the Rocky Mountain News.