"Generous and gorgeous... Filled with places and people that will stay with you long after you read it... " -- Nicole Helget, author of The Summer of Ordinary Ways
"A first-of-its-kind memoir ... An honest and thrilling reckoning of American and Armenian queer life." - J.P. Der Boghossian, Founder of the Queer Armenian Library and host of the podcast This Queer Book Saved My Life
In a small Texas town, Brent comes out to his parents, and on that night his place in the world cracks wide open. Unmoored from his family but unwilling to give up on his dream, Brent enters the Peace Corps with the incredible task of navigating an unfamiliar land, a new language, and a new identity as a gay man in post-Soviet Armenia.
As he grapples with a religious past and a queer future, Brent finds himself immersed in a culture he'd never imagined. He moves in with Armenian families, celebrates his first Nor Tari, hunts mushrooms in the mountain mists, and dances in Yerevan at his first gay bar, all while hoping for and trying to find romance, even love. When his Peace Corps commitment begins to take unexpected turns, Brent must decide what matters to him most and where he thinks he belongs.