Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land

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Our booksellers' favorite books of the year!

This is one of those rare books where every word is perfect, the storytelling is precisely paced and, while fractal, never feels broken or out-of-step. Environmentalist Broby ties the destruction of his beloved North Dakota home to the destruction of queer bodies, weaving his coming-out tale seamlessly into the story of coal and oil mining in the American Prairie. The effect is devastating and beautiful, and the book left me in breathless tears at the very end as Brorby literally puts his body on the line to protect one of the most unique and beautiful landscapes in the world.  Recommended By Deana R., Powells.com

"I am a child of the American West, a landscape so rich and wide that my culture trembles with terror before its power." So begins Taylor Brorby's Boys and Oil, a haunting, bracingly honest memoir about growing up gay amidst the harshness of rural North Dakota, "a place where there is no safety in a ravaged landscape of mining and fracking."

In visceral prose, Brorby recounts his upbringing in the coalfields; his adolescent infatuation with books; and how he felt intrinsically different from other boys. Now an environmentalist, Brorby uses the destruction of large swathes of the West as a metaphor for the terror he experienced as a youth. From an assault outside a bar in an oil boom town to a furtive romance, and from his awakening as an activist to his arrest at the Dakota Access Pipeline, Boys and Oil provides a startling portrait of an America that persists despite well-intentioned legal protections.

“Brorby writes movingly about this experience and its consequences...He ends the book by lamenting that, in North Dakota, 'there is no place for me.' But there is in the pages of this fine book.” — Booklist

“[A] lyrical meditation...Engrossing...[A] beautiful and complex look at how one can grow in the most unlikely places. Even at its most elegiac, this brims with quiet hope.” — Publishers Weekly

“In elegant chapters that often form stand-alone essays, we see Brorby easing into his own skin, acknowledging both the beauty and rough edges of his rural upbringing, and discovering that he is far from alone.” — Kirkus Reviews

Taylor Brorby is an essayist and poet. The coeditor of Fracture, his work has appeared in the Huffington Post, Orion, and North American Review, where he is a contributing editor.