Farm Story

Eddie Casson grew up on a farm in a small Indiana town where Church, family, and identitywere the unchanging signposts of an acceptable life.

Conventionality was more than justexpected--it was the highest form of success.

Art, music, and movies might have their placehere and there, but bonus was for boys to excel at traditional masculinepursuits.

Despite always feeling somehow different and apart from most of everyone elsearound him, he worked hard to be the perfect image of a son, brother, and friend.

Reared in ahousehold where perfection and faith were the two pillars of the family, he struggled tounderstand his own identity as well as the currents of unhappiness--and change--that werebeginning to swirl around him and the outside world.

Finding his way out of the straight jacketof his past into a different kind of future was a long rock-covered road.

He would find that hischoices would hurt people he loved along the way, but he also knew that living his true lifewould be the only thing that would make it all worth it. And with a loving and forgiving heart,he would be able to find his way back to people he loved while stumbling forward into his ownhappier future.This book is a memoir about growing up in Indiana in the '60s and '70s as a gay kid and youngman.

It is a series of linked portraits and moments that weave the story through.

Eddieworked to really create a sense of what it was like in these particular places in the particulartime.

The Midwest in those days had barely entered the modern era and his youth and life hada truly gothic, otherworldly cast to it.

It conveys not just the struggles of his experience, butthe poetry and soulfulness of it as well.