The amount of drama, conflict, tension, and crises keep the story moving at a fast pace, provocative, and exciting. The characters are engaging and the protagonist’s internal and external struggles are compelling and key to the intriguing plot. None of them is stereotypical-each one comes alive on the page as an individual based on physical appearance, internal thoughts, dialogue, and actions. They are interesting, sometimes unpredictable, and realistic despite their anomalous behaviors and actions. One of the major attributes of THE QUEERING is in the clear sense one gets of the characters’ personalities-what they value, their fears, their strengths, and their motivations. Add to the mix a brother just released from prison who has a major bone to pick with Taylor, a couple of misunderstood teens, public condemnation against the LGBTQ+ community, and a surprising new love interestįor Taylor, and readers will have a hard time putting this book down. And her current book, an autobiography, stirs up a controversial commotion in her school, family, and community. But the LGBTQ+ genre she chooses to write about doesn’t sit well with the conservative town in which she lives. When she writes as Brooke, she becomes her and feels free from dealing with her own unsettled life. While their romantic relationship was short, it was extraordinary, intensely significant in Taylor’s life, and something she has kept a secret since then. Taylor finds solace in writing novels under the pen name Brooke Skipstone-the name of her college roommate who had been her best friend for years and then her lover for the two days prior to Brooke’s tragic death at the hands of someone close to Taylor. Taylor doesn’t trust Marshall, nor does he trust her, and the love they have for each other appears to be in the distant past, if it was ever there at all. Seventy-year-old substitute teacher Taylor MacKenzie and her husband Marshall live in Clear, Alaska and have three children-two sons who they rarely see, and a troubled daughter who had died from a seizure years earlier.

The queering brooke skipstone