Some Go Hungry

Book excerpt: A gay man returns to his conservative hometown in a tale of memory and murder inspired by true events: “An emotionally resonant, page-turning story.”—Booklist Some Go Hungry is a fictional account drawn from the author’s own experiences working in his family’s provincial Indiana restaurant, and wrestling with his sexual orientation, in a town that was rocked by the scandalous murder of his gay high school classmate in the 1980s. Now a young man who has embraced his sexuality, Grey Daniels returns from Miami Beach, Florida, to Fort Sackville, Indiana, to run Daniels’ Family Buffet for his ailing father. Understanding that knowledge of his sexuality may reap disastrous results on his family's half-century-old restaurant legacy—a popular Sunday dinner spot for the after-church crowd—Grey struggles to live his authentic, openly gay life. But he is truly put to the test when his former high school lover—and fellow classmate of the murdered student—returns to town as the youth pastor and choir director of the local fundamentalist Christian church. Some Go Hungry is the story of a man forced to choose between the happiness of others and his own joy, all the while realizing that compromising oneself—sacrificing your soul for the sake of others—is not living, but death. “This literary mystery follows Grey Daniels on a return trip to his hometown of Fort Sackville, Indiana where, decades earlier, one of his gay classmates was brutally murdered. While visiting, Grey must confront a painful past riddled in homophobia, secrets, religious hypocrisy and fear.”—Queerty “Some Go Hungry is at its best when confronting religious prejudice, and is even pulse-quickening when the narrator sits through one of his friend's sermons aimed directly at him....Only someone who has grown up in rural America could write so convincingly of the pressures there. It's also refreshing to find a book that relates the experience of being gay somewhere other than in a large city.”—Gay & Lesbian Review “Tells an important tale that in some ways is timeless, and in other ways could have been ripped from today's headlines.”—Mark Childress, author of Crazy in Alabama