"For Avery Cullins-- library archivist, one- time teenage runaway, and gay man from a small Southern town--"family" means a live-in boyfriend and a surly turtle. But when his father, a renowned nuclear physicist, commits suicide, Avery's decade-long estrangement with his mother, who now suffers from dementia, comes to an end. With his boyfriend's help, Avery takes custody of his mother and, in a rented U-Haul, the trio heads cross country, back to an apartment in Cleveland and an uncertain future. The journey soon becomes a pilgrimage into the past as Avery sifts through his mother's mementos and a story of love, family, and loss emerges as his parents make a home, lose a child, and test the boundaries of marital love in the 1970s. Meanwhile, Avery must confront his own struggle with a mother who doesn't recognize him and a lover who, despite his cries to the contrary, is growing older, closer, and more domestic"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.