Garrard Conley

Garrard Conley is the author and central figure of the book. He was born and raised in a fundamentalist Christian community in the American South, and in his teenage years, he realized that he was homosexual. Due to the profound intolerance of homosexuality in his community, Conley hid his homosexuality and even tried to will himself to be heterosexual. He dated a classmate named Chloe, but when she wanted to have sex, he found that he could not go through with it, and he ended the relationship. In college, after he was raped by a male student, that student called Conley parents and outed Conley as homosexual. Conley’s parents forced him to go to sexuality conversion therapy every weekend, and then they enrolled him in a conversion therapy program called Love in Action.

Conley agreed to try to change his sexuality, as his upbringing had...