Compassionate. Provocative. Moving.

In this new collection, Thomas Westerfield challenges our expectations about the stories that can be told regarding sexuality, race, love, abuse, trauma, art, and intergenerational relationships.

We meet, among others, a men's sexual abuse group in rebellion against their earth mother therapist; a ninety-six-year-old gay cult writer who confronts a young queer interviewer; a burnt-out white professor playing dangerous academic games with his Black lesbian colleague; a teenager in a small Kentucky town in 1971 who experiences gay life for the first time through the movie, The Boys in the Band; a retired man sharing a Las Vegas roulette table with a lonely drunk college student celebrating his twenty-first birthday; a little boy terrified of what his Barbies will do to him in the dark of night; and a sex-trafficked young man, now free, explaining why he will never return to his family.

Some find acceptance, even peace, within the many contradictory and often warring elements of their hearts; some do not. But all are embraced with compassionate acceptance as they go on, without the world's understanding.