Love knows no gender.
Pate Boone, a twenty-six-year-old transgender man, embarks on a new adventure when his childhood best friend, and yes, ex-lover, Oakley Ogden, convinces him to escape their hometown in hopes for something new.
They land in Cloverleaf, a tiny rural town in Montana, so that Oakley can care for his granny who is battling breast cancer. She pressures the two young men to enroll in a nearby college. Pate immediately becomes enthralled with Maybelle, a young, vivacious freshman to whom he fears revealing his transgender identity. Still, he finds it impossible to resist Maybelle, even after he meets her ex, Bullet, a large, violent man determined to keep Pate away from "his girl."
But there are others who accept Pate immediately, like Stormy. An outdoorsy, rugged freshman, Stormy warns Pate away from Maybelle and Bullet, but Pate's too infatuated to heed these warnings.
Oakley tries to support his friend's new love but finds himself entangled in his own emotional calamity when he unintentionally falls for Jody, a gay and ostentatiously confident drag queen. This new relationship awakens deep internal conflicts in Oakley as he struggles to accept his bisexuality, lashing out at Pate and causing friction between him and Jody.
Oakley must decide if he can overcome his insecurities so he doesn't lose the love of his life. And Pate must discover if the love between him and Maybelle is strong enough for her to accept him as a transgender man, or if she will break his heart.
Pw, Carey: - Writing has always been my passion, as well as the way that I process my own life experiences. I am an openly transgender (AFAB), panromantic asexual living in rural Montana. There are few LGBTQIA+ resources here, and I always feel there is more room needed for LGBTQIA+ literary works. I have always written fiction as a hobby and earned a B.A. in English Literature and a M.Ed. in English Education from the University of Georgia; however, I ended up earning a Ph.D. in 2013, which moved most of my writing to the academic genre in which I have published several co-authored articles in peer-reviewed academic journals.After coming out as transgender in 2018 and as asexual in 2020, I decided to refocus my writing on LGBTQIA+ themes in which I write about my own experiences through fictional characters and stories. Writing about my experiences has been extremely therapeutic for me. I am particularly enthralled with the complexities behind LGBTQIA+ identities and highly advocate that sexuality and gender identity exists on a spectrum. This topic is highly personal because my husband married me when I presented as a woman and was adamant that he could not be with a man. He underwent his own process of reevaluating his sexuality and now identifies as bisexual with a preference for women and feminine men. I think he is a wonderful example of the true fluidity behind sexuality.Likewise, I choose to write about what it means to be LGBTQIA+ in a rural community like my current residence in Montana. Rural communities offer their own unique challenges due to little to no existing resources in some areas and a true feeling of isolation and invisibility. I want to share my experience coming out in a rural community and choosing to live openly as a transgender person and openly in a same-sex marriage.Additionally, I work full-time as a human services instructor and a mental health counselor at a community college. Through this work, I also educate and advocate for the LGBTQIA+ community. My work as an educator and a counselor fuels my desire to use my fiction to increase awareness and acceptance for LGBTQIA+ people. Lastly, I would characterize my writing as person-centered, a term created by Carl Rogers as a counseling therapy and later as a life philosophy. My works center around the beauty and extraordinary complexity in being vulnerably authentic.
