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Beard: A Memoir of a Marriage
“When I tell this story as a joke, I am its punchline. Leaning in close, I might start with this The night before my first husband got outed to me, I was in Chicago’s Boystown neighborhood dressed up as Liza Minnelli for Halloween.”
Kelly Foster Lundquist was nineteen when she met Devin at church camp in the late ’90s. Immediately inseparable, the two bonded over bootleg Tori Amos recordings and a sense of disconnection from the spiritual fervor of their fellow camp counselors. Devin was classically handsome and Kelly on the plain side of pretty, but they matched. Their twinned search for God, acceptance, and love would profoundly shape the rest of their lives.
In this striking debut memoir, Lundquist revisits her relationship with Devin twenty years after their divorce, as she investigates the “beard” trope in literature, culture, and her own romantic life. The straight woman who unwittingly marries a gay man is either a laughingstock or a fool—or both—in the popular imagination. And yet reality—much like desire—is more wild. Reality is midnight pad Thai, tenderness in Ralph Lauren sheets, ritual visits to Blockbuster, and beginning a PhD in queer theory while your husband secretly struggles to reconcile his double life.
A tour de force of empathy and vivid prose, Beard reckons honestly with the harm done to both husband and wife by churches that required rigid performances of gender and sexuality. In contrast, Lundquist learns to let go of brittle certainties as she embraces what her first marriage taught her about risk and redemption.
Kelly Foster Lundquist was nineteen when she met Devin at church camp in the late ’90s. Immediately inseparable, the two bonded over bootleg Tori Amos recordings and a sense of disconnection from the spiritual fervor of their fellow camp counselors. Devin was classically handsome and Kelly on the plain side of pretty, but they matched. Their twinned search for God, acceptance, and love would profoundly shape the rest of their lives.
In this striking debut memoir, Lundquist revisits her relationship with Devin twenty years after their divorce, as she investigates the “beard” trope in literature, culture, and her own romantic life. The straight woman who unwittingly marries a gay man is either a laughingstock or a fool—or both—in the popular imagination. And yet reality—much like desire—is more wild. Reality is midnight pad Thai, tenderness in Ralph Lauren sheets, ritual visits to Blockbuster, and beginning a PhD in queer theory while your husband secretly struggles to reconcile his double life.
A tour de force of empathy and vivid prose, Beard reckons honestly with the harm done to both husband and wife by churches that required rigid performances of gender and sexuality. In contrast, Lundquist learns to let go of brittle certainties as she embraces what her first marriage taught her about risk and redemption.
250 pages, Hardcover
Published October 30, 2025
18 people are currently reading
3698 people want to read
About the author
Kelly Foster Lundquist
1 book28 followersKelly Foster Lundquist teaches writing at North Hennepin Community College in Brooklyn Park, MN. Originally from Mississippi, Lundquist has taught writing all over the United States (Boston, Chicago, Mississippi, Seattle, California, etc), as well as in Slovakia and Scotland. Her poetry and nonfiction can be seen in many places, including Villain Era Lit, Last Syllable Lit, Whale Road Review, and Image Journal. Her work has been nominated for a 2024 Best of the Net Award as well as a Pushcart Prize. She is the recipient of grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board as well as the Central Minnesota Arts Board. Her book Beard: A Memoir of a Marriage (Eerdmans) will debut in October 2025 and received a starred review in Publisher's Weekly and was recently included in SheReads Most Anticipated Memoirs of Fall 2025 list. She lives in a little red house in Minnesota with her spouse and daughter.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
July 30, 2025
I'm shopping around a full piece on this and the Jen Hatmaker divorce memoir that's also coming out this fall, and I have lots to say that I won't say yet, but I'm a-buzz with excitement for this one. Stayed up until nearly 2 AM finishing it and keep thinking of more people I'm going to recommend it to. I'm half considering making a trip to Chicago for the release. This is one of the best-written memoirs I've read. Thanks, Eerdmans, for existing to publish stuff like this!
December 2, 2025
My Shelf Awareness review: "I've spent a lifetime feeling drawn to gay men," Kelly Foster Lundquist writes in her riveting debut memoir, Beard. Her brother and best friend are gay; she loves musical theater and considers Judy Garland a patron saint. So it's all the more ironic that she didn't realize for years that her first husband was homosexual.
Lundquist met Devin during college, when they were counselors at a Christian summer camp in Mississippi. She knew he'd been bullied in adolescence for being effeminate but only later learned he'd been subjected to counseling that fell just short of conversion therapy. When Lundquist started a PhD, the couple relocated to Chicago--to Boystown, a historically gay neighborhood. Descriptions of food and fashion create a neat context for their early-2000s courtship and marriage. She tracks her disordered eating and Devin's growing alcohol dependency with sensitivity, and she convincingly re-creates her naïve confusion over finding gay images and chat room discussions on their shared computer.
The scenes and dialogue sparkle. That's especially true of the pivotal sequence in which Lundquist dresses as Liza Minnelli for Halloween and, days afterward, the truth emerges about Devin's affairs with men. Lundquist explores the history of the "beard" stereotype common to 1950s Hollywood films and TV sitcoms. The language of deconstruction and queer literary theory, gleaned from her doctoral research, pairs with a newfound affirming theology. With that fresh perspective, Lundquist looks back--two decades on, a remarried English professor and mother--with compassion for her ex-husband as well as her younger self.
(Posted with permission from Shelf Awareness.)
Lundquist met Devin during college, when they were counselors at a Christian summer camp in Mississippi. She knew he'd been bullied in adolescence for being effeminate but only later learned he'd been subjected to counseling that fell just short of conversion therapy. When Lundquist started a PhD, the couple relocated to Chicago--to Boystown, a historically gay neighborhood. Descriptions of food and fashion create a neat context for their early-2000s courtship and marriage. She tracks her disordered eating and Devin's growing alcohol dependency with sensitivity, and she convincingly re-creates her naïve confusion over finding gay images and chat room discussions on their shared computer.
The scenes and dialogue sparkle. That's especially true of the pivotal sequence in which Lundquist dresses as Liza Minnelli for Halloween and, days afterward, the truth emerges about Devin's affairs with men. Lundquist explores the history of the "beard" stereotype common to 1950s Hollywood films and TV sitcoms. The language of deconstruction and queer literary theory, gleaned from her doctoral research, pairs with a newfound affirming theology. With that fresh perspective, Lundquist looks back--two decades on, a remarried English professor and mother--with compassion for her ex-husband as well as her younger self.
(Posted with permission from Shelf Awareness.)
July 21, 2025
Vulnerable, authentic, heart-breaking and beautiful. I read this in one afternoon because I couldn’t put it down. The story telling is so compelling, you forget this is non-fiction. I imagine it took a lot of courage to share this story and it was done well and with love.
July 31, 2025
What a beautifully written story of growth, forgiveness, and maturity. Passing this along to all my friends.
November 28, 2025
Diamond bright memories. A kaleidoscope of emotions. Prose that shines with the brilliance of love, forgiveness, and empathy - for her husband and for her younger self. Tragedy that gleams like the sharpest knife causing the death by a thousand cuts. Heartbreaking but (like the quote below) worth the read for the resilience and joy.
Superb blurb:
After a lifetime of feeling my body, it was a revelation to come into a place where no one seemed to fear theirs. And for reasons I couldn't yet fully discern, it was a relief to live in a space where no one was hiding. I was inspired by the bravery of the people who made a home there by owning the thing about them that, in so many cases, had exiled them from their friends and family and the places they'd come from. It felt like a resilient place, a joyful place.
Superb blurb:
After a lifetime of feeling my body, it was a revelation to come into a place where no one seemed to fear theirs. And for reasons I couldn't yet fully discern, it was a relief to live in a space where no one was hiding. I was inspired by the bravery of the people who made a home there by owning the thing about them that, in so many cases, had exiled them from their friends and family and the places they'd come from. It felt like a resilient place, a joyful place.
June 9, 2025
Breath-taking debut. This book is intriguing and captivating. Thought-provoking and tight as hell. (You know I appreciate a book with no wasted words.) It’s both a love story and an essay on truth, sexuality, and growth. But it’s so much more. And it reads like page-turning fiction, even though you know it’s 100% real. I devoured it in one weekend.
June 15, 2025
I’m going to be thinking about this book for a long time. And the scene in the snow, when the narrator moves from rage to acceptance, a knowing that her husband tried, he truly tried, and he, too, had been deeply hurt, just as he had deeply hurt her — my goodness. Gutting and visceral and totally gorgeous. What a sincere and totally necessary book.
August 5, 2025
Wow! I stayed up until midnight finishing this gripping, heartbreaking, beautifully drawn, unflinchingly brave memoir. Kelly Foster Lundquist writes with such an incisive sense of presence that she invites us into the intimacy and heartbreak of memoir of a marriage with her. Beard unmasks the perils and loneliness of a Christianity that promotes “beating our bodies” into submission at the cost of our deepest selves, relationships and lived experiences. But Beard also reveals an alternate way forward - to live with authenticity, love and compassion.
November 12, 2025
I’m not sure what I expected from Kelly Foster Lundquist’s “Beard: A Memoir of a Marriage,” but I’m certain it wasn't the story I received. The book was not so much a memoir of a marriage, but more a dissertation about Lundquist’s life, her self-deprecation, her outlook, her failures, etc. I found myself skipping pages over her literary commentary on Whitman and Stoker as well as the social analysis on Ethel, Judy, and Liza’s lavender marriages. Although humorous, “Beard” is not a light book. Not worth the read.
November 6, 2025
Kelly Foster Lundquist explores an often lampooned idea– a woman married to a closeted gay man– in her debut memoir Beard: A Memoir of a Marriage. But Kelly’s experience as a so-called “beard” is not typical and not, as she suggests in her introduction, the butt of every joke. Instead, Lundquist’s memoir excavates the rigid performances of gender and sexuality enforced by patriarchal and religious communities.
Kelly Foster Lundquist, who met her husband at church camp, grew up with a set of beliefs about faith, marriage, and womanhood, begins to question her preconceptions through study of queer theory while her husband struggles with his sexuality. Lundquist does not emerge from this story as a fool, though he acknowledges the harm she felt done as well as the harm her husband experienced. What she creates instead is a story of redemption and connection, a story about complicated love.
I want to thank the folks at Kaye Publicity and Eerdmans Publishing Company for providing an ARC copy of the book for review. If you’d like to read Kelly’s story herself and dive into the cultural examination of the “beard” trope, you can pick up Beard: A Memoir of a Marriage online or in bookstores.
Kelly Foster Lundquist, who met her husband at church camp, grew up with a set of beliefs about faith, marriage, and womanhood, begins to question her preconceptions through study of queer theory while her husband struggles with his sexuality. Lundquist does not emerge from this story as a fool, though he acknowledges the harm she felt done as well as the harm her husband experienced. What she creates instead is a story of redemption and connection, a story about complicated love.
I want to thank the folks at Kaye Publicity and Eerdmans Publishing Company for providing an ARC copy of the book for review. If you’d like to read Kelly’s story herself and dive into the cultural examination of the “beard” trope, you can pick up Beard: A Memoir of a Marriage online or in bookstores.
December 12, 2025
Beard: A Memoir of a Marriage is a powerful, unflinchingly honest, and emotionally resonant memoir about love, identity, faith, and the hidden truths that shape relationships. Kelly Foster Lundquist revisits her marriage to Devin whom she met at a church camp in the late ’90s with tenderness, wisdom, and a remarkable ability to illuminate the complexities of human connection. Her narrative moves beyond the simplistic “beard” trope to reveal a layered reality filled with vulnerability, longing, friendship, intimacy, and the struggle to belong in environments demanding rigid conformity.
What makes this memoir stand out is the vividness of Kelly’s storytelling and the generosity of her perspective. She captures small, intimate details late night pad Thai, quiet tenderness, shared routines that bring their relationship fully to life. At the same time, she offers sharp cultural insight, weaving in literature, queer theory, and the societal forces that shaped both of their journeys. Beard is not just a memoir of marriage it’s a meditation on damage, faith, identity, and the possibility of redemption. It lingers long after the last page.
What makes this memoir stand out is the vividness of Kelly’s storytelling and the generosity of her perspective. She captures small, intimate details late night pad Thai, quiet tenderness, shared routines that bring their relationship fully to life. At the same time, she offers sharp cultural insight, weaving in literature, queer theory, and the societal forces that shaped both of their journeys. Beard is not just a memoir of marriage it’s a meditation on damage, faith, identity, and the possibility of redemption. It lingers long after the last page.
August 4, 2025
When Kelly Foster Lundquist met her husband at summer camp, she knew she had finally met someone who just got her. She thought she got him too, but there was a major part of him that even he didn't get yet. With humor, insight, and compassion Lundquist looks back on her marriage and the discovery that her husband was cheating on her with other men. She considers her role as his beard, and how she managed to be the last to know. She invites us into the devastation of losing the man she loved, the man who loved her, but she also brings us into the redemption that has come about over the last 20 years. I received an ARC of this book from Publisher's Weekly's Grab a Galley Giveaway, and I appreciated the opportunity to see inside a complex relationship that is often deeply misunderstood.
August 7, 2025
Despite planning to read just a chapter or two before bed, I devoured the entire book in one sitting. Lundquist perfectly weaves together culture, literary theory, and the story of both her marriage and finding herself in a way that flows freely without feeling forced. I related greatly to her desire to dive into research and literature that would give greater understanding to the events occurring in and around her life. I laughed aloud at some parts and sobbed uncontrollably at others, but through it all I was amazed at the strength and grace with which she faced so much uncertainty. I admire her willingness to share her story, one that while unique in so many ways also feels relatable and familiar. It’s also beautifully written.
I received an ARC from NetGalley.
I received an ARC from NetGalley.
August 18, 2025
Beard is a raw, tender, and brilliantly written memoir that peels back the layers of love, faith, and identity. Kelly Foster Lundquist revisits her first marriage to Devin an earnest search for God and belonging that collided with hidden truths. What could have been reduced to a cultural punchline becomes, in her hands, a deeply moving exploration of desire, vulnerability, and the damage done by rigid expectations of gender and sexuality. With vivid prose and unflinching empathy, Lundquist transforms a story of heartbreak into one of risk, resilience, and redemption
November 1, 2025
First, a disclaimer. I know the author, although we are not close friends. If I didn't like the book, I would just not review it! Like mom taught me, if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all!
But the truth is, I LOVED this book. "Memoir" could easily be replaced by "Love Story." The author describes everything, including her feelings, so well that I felt like I was right there. Her writing style makes it so easy to read.
It sounds cliché, I both laughed and cried. Loved the book!
But the truth is, I LOVED this book. "Memoir" could easily be replaced by "Love Story." The author describes everything, including her feelings, so well that I felt like I was right there. Her writing style makes it so easy to read.
It sounds cliché, I both laughed and cried. Loved the book!
November 14, 2025
I expected the one-sided pity party; what came as a complete surprise was a description of every meal the author had ever eaten. Yes, just when you want to know more of her tale (which takes up roughly the same amount as the attention given to her education), here come the ooooodles of noodles of adjectives - spoonfuls of the things set out on platters at buffets for your delectation in all of their luscious, sumptuous, glistening, moist deliciousness.
I listened to the author reading this on Audible. It was a little gratin.
I listened to the author reading this on Audible. It was a little gratin.
October 30, 2025
Maybe I’m biased (she was my 9th grade English teacher) but this book is a revelation. I felt like I was standing right there beside her on every page. So raw, so vulnerable, so absolutely gorgeous. Had to put my head down after finishing. Had to tell my mom I love her. Felt bad that all this had happened to her when she had to teach a 14 year old me who was dedicated to doing the bare minimum. The author deserves all the good things coming her way, I am so very proud.
December 22, 2025
Kelly and Devin's story tore my heart apart. The ending, especially. So well done. So heartbreaking, and yet . . . somehow uplifting.
Without context, the following quote from the book says nothing. But PLEASE read this book - because at this point, at the very end, if you don't cry buckets when you read it, well . . .
"So good. So good, I think to myself. Bjork is from Iceland. Noodles taste good."
Without context, the following quote from the book says nothing. But PLEASE read this book - because at this point, at the very end, if you don't cry buckets when you read it, well . . .
"So good. So good, I think to myself. Bjork is from Iceland. Noodles taste good."
December 3, 2025
I loved this book. It was, at turns, heartbreaking and infuriating, but above all, it was simply beautiful, an absolutely gorgeous memoir rich in exactly the right details. Kudos to Kelly on completing what must have felt like a Sisyphean task. Your hard work has blessed us all with a generous and honest story from a point of view that is most often ignored.
December 24, 2025
Beautiful, funny, heartbreaking, tender, thought-provoking. I felt so deeply for Kelly Foster Lundquist and her husband Devin. A compassionate story of two young people seeking to expand their sense of the world and of themselves.
November 15, 2025
Incredible read!
I read the book in two nights and could not put it down. An amazing memoir from a beautiful writer.
I read the book in two nights and could not put it down. An amazing memoir from a beautiful writer.
November 19, 2025
left me speechless and so emotional. this is a memoir i will be recommending time after time. A MUST READ!!!
November 27, 2025
She is simply more forgiving than I would be!
Clever, clear writing. I appreciated the humor and vulnerability of the author throughout. I do wish there was more “after” moments.
Clever, clear writing. I appreciated the humor and vulnerability of the author throughout. I do wish there was more “after” moments.
December 28, 2025
Like others I could not put this down once I started it. Such raw emotion and story telling.
November 24, 2025
The author is a long time acquaintance, and I know many of the places and some of the people mentioned. Kelly is smart, funny, authentic, and an excellent storyteller, all which was very evident in this book. It was a beautiful and well written story of love and courage to let go.
December 28, 2025
Vulnerable, witty, heartbreaking, sharp, tender. And totally unputdownable. My quickest read of 2025.
December 9, 2025
I first heard about this via an interview on Ronit Plank's podcast, Let's Talk Memoir, and I'm so glad I did. I have not encountered many literary memoirs that take place in the South, and as I grew up in Alabama, I particularly appreciate how this book takes a critical look at some of the cultural lies that surrounded us while still creating an empathetic, humanizing, and positive view of this region and its inhabitants. The memoir is propulsive, and I found myself trying to sneak off every minute I had to read more.
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews