A Boy's Own Story is a now-classic coming-of-age story, but with a twist: the young protagonist is growing up gay during one of the most oppressive periods in American history. Set in the time and place of author Edmund White's adolescence, the Midwest of the 1950s, the novel became an immediate bestseller, and for many readers was not merely about gay identity but the pain of being a child in a fractured family while looking for love in an anything-but-stable...