Beard: A Memoir of a Marriage

by Kelly Foster Lundquist

“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. 

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, LGBT, Biography, Queer, Religion, Sexuality

250 pages, Hardcover

Published October 30, 2025

About the author

Kelly 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.

Reviews

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

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!

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.)

[Ella Hachee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love is complicated.

[Sarah Foley · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Meredith Foster · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a beautifully written story of growth, forgiveness, and maturity. Passing this along to all my friends.

[Bajidc · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Anna Rollins · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Abigail Franklin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lot of grace in these pages. The last two lines got me. A great depiction of a story with no hero and no villain but a slew of victims. More than anything, this book made me feel so lucky that I didn’t end up putting someone else through this. There is a (very close) possible universe where I would have been the Devin in someone else’s story, had one or two things in my life gone differently.

[Becky · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Annie Oortman · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Mediaman · Rating 1 out of 5]

Confusing bore of a memoir, a misguided and overwritten book not worth wasting your time on. A supposedly traditional Christian publisher prints this mindless nonsense that basically says that there's no absolute truth, we can call God "female" and emphasize His "feminine side," that things created by straight men are worthless unless women get to have equal input, that sexual ambiguity supposedly represents science, and that traditional Christianity is no longer relevant.

This is all while the author tells the meandering and dull story of her crumbling marriage to a man attracted to other men. The subject may be somewhat interesting, but the book's premise is misleading and told so poorly that there are probably only two dozen pages that contain any solid content--and those are sometimes used to preach propaganda. The rest of it is not complete truth where she stuffs it with inconsequential minor details.

This woman is an English professor and she joins the list of other lit educators who don't know how to tell a great story. She overdoes her disconnected style of filling pages with unnecessary adjustives, using the bizarre historical first person (present tense to say things that happened long ago, even when she wasn't there!), and failing to edit out her tangential statements that have no real point.

As a reader I'm offended that this author expects me to believe that, as she puts it, "I have a very good long-term memory," spewing incredibly minor descriptors and quotes of conversations and locations from 25 years ago! She overdoes them so often in the text that you'll groan as you read her attempts at creative writing by including a half-dozen fake facts in a single paragraph. At a dinner 25 years ago, she writes that her friend "cleaves yet another plump shrimp with her teeth, she dips a pinch of pillowy focaccia...." Who "cleaves" a shrimp at dinner? Or dips a "pinch" of "pillowy" focaccia? If this is how she recalls something a quarter of a century ago, her world is basically a fairy tale, where she repeats conversations and scenes she wasn't always present for.

Which leads to a logical conclusion--if we can't trust her handling of the little false facts, so we certainly can't trust her with the big stuff. Take all of this with a grain of salt, as "creative non-fiction."

Then she keeps inserting other examples of women being beards for gay men in life or literature, yet her inconsequential life story doesn't usually relate to any of the history she alludes to. Why is there a chapter on Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, with no relation to her story? Why the constant reinsertion of Walt Whitman?

But also why an incredibly long section on she and her husband watching certain TV shows and movies, as well as specifics about what they eat or the restaurants they go to, adding nothing to the storyline? Or why details in the book about things having a mouse in her kitchen or dressing as Liza Minelli for Halloween? I still can't figure out why so many pages are devoted to NOTHING. It was just nervous rambling. There are almost no actual meaningful stories that provide any type of plot.

For example, here's the mouse story, filled with unnecessary verbiage, when her husband is alone in the kitchen: "He is getting a glass of water, facing the sink that faces the high-top bar of our two-bedroom, double-balcony, open-concept apartment by the lake. Out of the corner of his left eye, a small, dark shape, bigger and slower than a cockroach, flits behind the flour canister...A brown mouse pushes its whiskers out first, and next, the pink tip of its nose, nudging it just beyond the impossibly narrow enclosure, between the ceramic cylinders of flour and sugar. When the black beads of its eyes finally emerge, it makes eye contact with (him), then scurries, hell for leather, across the top of the beige oven and squeezes itself beneath the unlit electric circle of the stove's back right burner."

1. Who cares? This doesn't lead to anything more than they have mice. 2. Why is she using present tense when this happened 25 years ago? 3. Is this what she thinks is good storytelling when it sounds like a sixth grader trying to use flowery prose to meet a minimum word limit? 4. AND how in the world does she know any of this detail, because she ISN'T THERE WHEN IT HAPPENS!?!

The entire book feels like this, simply a lot of filler since she lacks a dramatic narrative that includes any real conflict. Even her husband's slow coming out revelation lacks a payoff and is drawn on for so many pages that you won't even care when the two break up.

And the tense thing is really a problem the way she misuses it. For example, historical present doesn't work when at one point she writes of something 25 years ago, saying "Even now at 21," then later forwards to a reference to "today" (2025) starting with "Even now." So when is NOW--2025 or 2000? Or what day is TODAY?

The first half of the memoir is basically like that, dull background and doesn't match the book's theme; the second half is supposed to be about her figuring out her bedmate is actually gay. But it all quickly sinks into being almost unreadable with her sideline "transformation" from conservative believer to politically correct woke skeptic. She personally rejects the Bible as Truth in order to push that life is about "the truth is within you."

While early on she knows about her husband's desire for men, she (not her husband) is the one who chooses to move to Chicago's gay neighborhood to do a kind of exposure therapy to help him get closer to her! (Hard to believe she thought that would work.) Instead, she becomes den mother and party partner to the gay guys of Boystown. But then it still takes her years to figure out that her man has been sleeping with the neighborhood gay guys?

The problem is that this is really a book about a woman's struggle with her self-image and faith, but that's not how it's being sold. This is not just about a female beard to a gay husband but is used as a tool to slam traditional Christianity, conservatives, and even sound Biblical teaching. It's funny how a spurned insecure women in the 21st century can think she knows more about life, spirituality, love, and truth than the wisdom of the past couple thousand years.

But since she doesn't believe in absolute truth (as she clearly states) and that truth is whatever is true for you, then any conclusion she comes to can't be wrong, right? That must be her reasoning as she literally condemns churches about how women are treated, claiming she wants total equality between the sexes. Certainly there are proper concerns to be raised about religious issues in modern culture, but it's difficult to do regarding what scripture teaches about women.

But how is she going to get those "male assigned at birth" to be able to give birth if she truly wants everything equal between the sexes? She rejects the ancient concept that God gives different responsibilities and authority to different sexes for different aspects of life. If she's so into equality, should men start demanding authority to give birth, breast feed, and make reproductive choices? (And if you're rolling your eyes, that's the point. What does equality mean, really?)

The autobiography suddenly stops when she chooses to dump her husband after totally supporting him through years of homosexual urges. Then a couple pages are tacked on at the end from the about 20 years since to summarize that she married again, has a daughter, and is going to a super liberal church.

She should have included chapters about all of that and cut out at least half of what preceded it. But this woman has no sense of how to put a book together with real content.

That being said, this could have been a decent book if we heard her husband's side. For example, when he decides to marry her she ends the chapter with: "I wonder how it felt for him to know that in choosing me, he had chosen to always be alone." Many gay and bisexual men can identify with that feeling, and that's what's missing in all of this: the gay man's perspective. Ironic, since she is the one always claiming women don't get their views represented, and she fails to allow him to adequately be given a voice here. And her brother is gay--why aren't we hearing anything about his perspective as well?

The book contains a lot of this hypocrisy, where the author is guilty of doing the very things she condemns churches, Christianity and conservatives for. Stereotyping, putting others down, and building an argument based on limited writings that only reinforce her viewpoint.

In the end it would be much more interesting to have heard the story from her ex-husband's perspective because there's little intrigue and distracting verbosity when it comes to Lundquist's telling. It's warped, overly emotional, and sad that she tries to rewrite history while ending up still going to church in 2025 to bring her "progressive" perspectives to the masses. If you are an inconsistent woke bigoted feminist/leftist filled with hatred for your past, then you'll probably eat this up; many of us that believe in objective truth will just think this beard needs to be cut.

[September · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beard: A Memoir of a Marriage is a piercing, compassionate, and intellectually rigorous debut that dismantles the cultural shorthand surrounding heterosexual marriage, queerness, and religious conformity. With wit, vulnerability, and scholarly insight, Kelly Foster Lundquist revisits her first marriage to a closeted gay man and reframes it not as a punchline, but as a deeply human story shaped by love, denial, tenderness, and institutional harm.

Lundquist’s prose is vivid and emotionally precise, moving seamlessly between humor and heartbreak. From church camp in the late 1990s to ritual Blockbuster visits and graduate studies in queer theory, the memoir captures the texture of a shared life lived under the pressure of rigid religious expectations. The marriage itself is rendered with nuance full of affection, shared longing, and genuine intimacy even as it is undermined by secrecy and fear.

One of the memoir’s greatest strengths lies in its interrogation of the “beard” trope. Rather than accepting the cultural narrative that casts straight women in such marriages as naïve or ridiculous, Lundquist challenges readers to consider how desire, faith, and survival intersect in environments hostile to queer truth. Her analysis is grounded not only in personal experience but also in literary and cultural criticism, lending the memoir intellectual weight without sacrificing emotional immediacy.

Equally powerful is Lundquist’s examination of evangelical Christianity’s role in enforcing performances of gender and sexuality. She holds space for both herself and her former husband, refusing simplistic blame while clearly naming the damage inflicted by institutions that demand silence and self-erasure. The memoir becomes, in this way, not only a personal reckoning but a broader critique of religious systems that mistake conformity for morality.

Beard is a work of rare empathy and clarity one that honors complexity, rejects shame, and embraces ambiguity. It will resonate deeply with readers interested in memoir, queer studies, religion, and the many forms love can take under constraint. This is a brave and essential contribution to contemporary nonfiction.

[Michael Doane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beard: A Memoir of a Marriage is sharp, tender, and quietly devastating a memoir that refuses easy villains or punchlines, even as it interrogates a cultural trope built almost entirely from them.

Kelly Foster Lundquist revisits her first marriage not to settle scores, but to understand what love, faith, and self erasure looked like inside institutions that demanded certainty over honesty. Her prose is incisive and emotionally generous, moving fluidly between cultural critique and lived experience. The result is a memoir that feels both intellectually rigorous and deeply humane.

What makes Beard exceptional is its refusal to flatten experience. Lundquist dismantles the stereotype of the “straight woman who marries a gay man” with precision and compassion, replacing caricature with lived texture: shared rituals, genuine affection, and the quiet ache of two people trying to survive inside roles they did not freely choose. The marriage is neither a joke nor a mistake it is a real relationship shaped by love and constrained by fear.

Equally powerful is the book’s reckoning with religion. Lundquist does not merely indict church culture for its rigid performances of gender and sexuality; she shows how those systems harm everyone involved, forcing secrecy, shame, and emotional contortion. Her exploration of queer theory alongside memory deepens the narrative without distancing the reader, making Beard as accessible as it is intellectually rich.

Ultimately, Beard is a memoir about learning to live without brittle certainties about choosing empathy over judgment and curiosity over resentment. It’s a remarkable debut that expands the emotional and moral vocabulary of marriage, queerness, and belief. Honest, brave, and beautifully written, this book lingers long after the final page.

[Evelyn Berry · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Stephanie Dargusch Borders · Rating 5 out of 5]

Divorce memoirs are one of my most favorite subgenres of all time, and this one was special. Most divorce memoirs include a good dose of bitterness imo. One party has wronged the other, vows were obliterated, and the relationship that evolved after the fact, nonexistent. Kelly Foster Lundquist has a different story to tell. Her marriage just felt different from what were typically given in a divorce memoir, for good reason. Her husband ended up being gay. This truth is revealed to her little by little over the course of their five year marriage. Hindsight is everything, and it’s easy to see in retrospect that there were tell tale signs.

I don’t think I’ve ever finished a divorce memoir on a high note, but this was it. Truly heartwarming. I love the author and I love Devin and they certainly hurt each other along the way but they both seem like wonderful people with good hearts. All the feels with this one.

[Sonny Caterini · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loooooved this memoir. It was really well done! Such a pleasant suprise and I became so wrapped up in the story by the end.

Her writing style was very fun, and even though there were quite a few heavy topics, it never felt like a overly emotional book. I was really rooting for Kelly as the book went on, and I think this is because the memoir never felt inflated or fake – it was a really nice blend of having a fun writerly touch and being realistic. I also liked hearing from a straight author, because I normally read queer memoirs. I was worried I would become annoyed, but I really empathized with her, and it definitely was a unique perspective (being a beard) that I haven't seen or heard about from a first-person POV.

This book wasn't so “impactful” per se, but I feel wrong giving it any less than five stars because of how much fun I had reading it!

[Teresa Fales · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

To keep it simple: Kelly Foster Lundquist's Beard is phenomenal. The writing is smooth and casual; this is an author comfortable with language, never wooden and never trying too hard. But what really stands out is her honesty, both with herself and in her connections with others (including what she doesn't see and doesn't know). Lundquist is often funny, but she never makes light of the serious subject matter--it never becomes the joke. Y'all can read the book description for more, but, in general, this is the story of her first marriage, to a man who happens to be gay, and how this understanding (and lack thereof) impacts the world she inhabits. Easily an award-contender.

[Kimijo · Rating 5 out of 5]

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

[Nancy Hassett · Rating 5 out of 5]

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!

[Ed Gaskell · Rating 2 out of 5]

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.

[Lacey Ballard · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Barbie Bookworm · Rating 5 out of 5]

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."

[Shelby · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Lauren Rhoades · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Paula · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a memoir of a lady who was married to a gay man. The book covers how she came to find out and eventually come to terms with her husband's sexuality. Very open and honest.

ATY #32: A novella of 100-250 pages.

[Koko Stubitsch · Rating 4 out of 5]

"...is an excerpt from a book called Women’s Ways of Knowing. The passage we are assigned introduces the concept of connected knowing, which the authors posit as a kind of feminine antidote to the binary, patriarchal, categorical absolutes of what they call separate knowing. Connected knowing consists of a collaborative, cooperative kind of knowledge, foregrounded by relationships to things, an intuitive knowledge based in personal experience, not necessarily in external authority."

"I want to push him into the deep end of insight he never sought from me."

[PJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exquisite, raw memoir.
Lundquist has the reader in the palm of her hand from beginning to end. And while it's quite a complicated journey, the love she has for Devin shines through her own pain and grief.