Continental Divide

(Author)
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Product Details
Price
$18.95  $17.62
Publisher
University of New Orleans Press
Publish Date
Pages
296
Dimensions
5.5 X 7.9 X 1.0 inches | 0.85 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9781608011698

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About the Author
Author of Revolutionary, Alex Myers was born and raised in western Maine. Since high school, Alex has campaigned for transgender rights. As a female-to-male transgender person, Alex began his transition at Phillips Exeter Academy (returning his senior year as a man after attending for three years as a woman) and was the first transgender student in that academy's history. Alex was also the first openly transgender student at Harvard, and worked to change the university's nondiscrimination clause to include gender identity. After earning a master's in religion from Brown University, Alex began a career as a high school English teacher. Along the way, he earned an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. He currently lives in New Hampshire with his wife and two cats.
Reviews
"On the outs with his family, a young transgender man makes his way west to discover what masculinity means to him. Ron Bancroft has always felt like a boy--his former life as "Veronica," a tomboyish basketball star, never felt right. But when he comes out to his parents, they refuse to contribute to his education at Harvard, and he's forced to withdraw from school in order to establish financial independence. Adrift from his family and ex-girlfriend, Ron travels from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Cody, Wyoming, where he chances into work on a ranch. "I was out West," Ron thinks early in the novel. "The land of the rugged individual. The land where you got a chance to prove what you were really made of. The land where men were men, or they got the hell out of town." Set in the early 1990s, Ron's journey to self-acceptance simmers with fear of discovery in the rural west. He shimmies in and out of a compression shirt, takes pains to shower when no one else is in the bunkhouse, and--against his better judgment--falls for outspoken Cassie, a horse wrangler and co-owner of the ranch with her brother Gus. When Ron is outed by Cassie's malicious younger brother, Marc, he's fired and set adrift once more, this time with a target on his back. Myers (Revolutionary, 2014) has written a compelling coming-of-age novel even as he occasionally veers into more pedantic territory. "I don't want being transgender to limit what I can do and where I can go," Ron writes in an application for financial assistance for LGBTQ teens. "I have to stand up and live as who I am, with the expectation that people will treat me decently." With care, patience, and courage, Ron mends relationships new and old, ultimately coming to find a home in himself and his chosen family. A moving meditation on fear, masculinity, and the power of coming out." --Kirkus Reviews

"Moving at a brisk pace, the story includes a few interesting twists, though its coming-of-age elements are easier to predict. Ron is sympathetic and developed as he tries to figure out what it means to be masculine, according to himself and others; what he really wants in life; and how his honesty can sometimes result in pain and loss...As Ron reveals his inner truths, the story comes to shine. His deep conversations about being transgender stand out; they are honest, enlightening, natural, and moving. Continental Divide is a unique novel about what it means to be a man, no matter where you start." --Foreword Review