"It is easy to believe that America has progressed, that violent homophobia is a thing of the past, but Taylor Brorby's sobering story tells us otherwise. In Boys and Oil, a bracingly honest coming-of-age memoir, Brorby takes us to 'flyover country' and to his hometown of Center, North Dakota, 'a place where people only end up' ... Here Brorby recounts his story, and that of the prairie, too, interweaving historic coal-country vignettes with scenes from his youth to forge a new path across notoriously unforgiving landscape ... Drawing readers into the tumultuous relationships of his early adulthood, Brorby relays his decision to flee North Dakota--physically, but never spiritually--for Minnesota, and eventually to come out on his own terms. Now an environmentalist, Brorby casts the prairie as a place of vulnerability, 'where humans and animals must be resilient to survive'"--Dust jacket flap.
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