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Out
It seems that every other family in the world has a secret that Will doesn’t know, and when his brother ends up in a coma after a third drunk driving accident, he confronts the family and then leaves home to go and find this other truth. The search leads Will on a wild chase through academia, corporate America, the wilderness of another country and back to the most unexpected place he could have here.
Out is the story of a young boy coming to consciousness in a rural American family that is plagued by intergenerational trauma and poverty. Will could tell something was wrong with the way things were, but couldn’t do anything about it. He picked up the family traits as he grew and tried to prove himself while grappling with confusion about what was right. Fragments of different ways of living filtered in, forming an increasingly powerful register of the difference between what should be endured and what doesn’t need to be. Will finds that he can’t change his family, and that he must leave them to survive.
Out is the story of a young boy coming to consciousness in a rural American family that is plagued by intergenerational trauma and poverty. Will could tell something was wrong with the way things were, but couldn’t do anything about it. He picked up the family traits as he grew and tried to prove himself while grappling with confusion about what was right. Fragments of different ways of living filtered in, forming an increasingly powerful register of the difference between what should be endured and what doesn’t need to be. Will finds that he can’t change his family, and that he must leave them to survive.
261 pages, Paperback
Published September 8, 2023
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May 10, 2025
I had the pleasure of growing up with this author and knowing him, I am not surprised by how beautifully written and deep this memoir is. Will was always meant to leave our hometown and accomplish great things. The way he describes our hometown is scarily accurate; it gave me goosebumps. His reflections on family, education, work and mental health are nuanced, thoughtful and raw. As someone who has also gotten “out” of our hometown and moved across the world, the memoir is extremely relatable, yet also very different in many ways to my own childhood, despite growing up down the street from each other and attending the same small school. This is a powerful first book by Will and I look forward to hopefully reading more of his work someday in the future.
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