Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land

To put it simply, Boys and Oil is my most anticipated book of 2022. In this coming-of-age memoir, Brorby reflects on growing up gay in rural North Dakota, where mining and fracking has left indelible scars upon both the land and the people that call it home. Filled with some of the most beautiful language and deepest insights on activism, love, and belonging that I've read in years, Boys and Oil is essential reading for anyone interested in environmentalism and the American West.--Michael Welch "Chicago Review of Books"
Brorby writes movingly about this experience and its consequences . . . Divided into seven parts, prefaced by a prologue and concluding with a coda, the memoir focuses on Brorby's life as an out gay man but makes room for his efforts as an environmental activist, experiencing the Bakken oil boom and fighting the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. 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.--Michael Cart "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 . . . A closely observed account of both landscape and self.-- "Kirkus Reviews"