Beard A Memoir of a Marriage

"When I tell this story as a joke, I am its punchline. Leaning in close, I might start with this bit: The night before my first husband got outed to me, I was in Chicago's Boystown neighborhood dressed up as Liza Minnelli for Halloween." Kelly Foster Lundquist was nineteen when she met Devin at church camp in the late '90s. Immediately inseparable, the two bonded over bootleg Tori Amos recordings and a sense of disconnection from the spiritual fervor of their fellow camp counselors. Devin was classically handsome and Kelly on the plain side of pretty, but they matched. Their twinned search for God, acceptance, and love would profoundly shape the rest of their lives. In this striking debut memoir, Lundquist revisits her relationship with Devin twenty years after their divorce, as she investigates the "beard" trope in literature, culture, and her own romantic life. The straight woman who unwittingly marries a gay man is either a laughingstock or a fool--or both--in the popular imagination. And yet reality--much like desire--is more wild.