Waltzing a Two-Step
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Waltzing a Two-Step
Reckoning Family, Faith and Self
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Author: Dan Juday (Ireland)
A first-person account of a bright, timid boy born into the rural Midwest mid-20th Century, enthralled with the grandeur of his local woodlands, public library and Catholic Church. One of five children in an upwardly mobile family, he struggles with being gay. He looks for his proper place in an enticing but unwelcoming world, a search that leaves behind failed attempts at a normal life and takes him overseas and back again, chasing lost happiness and struggling to fit in. His search ultimately reveals that he has been looking for himself all along. It is a cautionary tale, drawn against the era’s major cultural upheavals, told late in life out of the comfort of self-acceptance and a regret over opportunities gone by without addressing things that should have been said earlier.