The book weaves the story of journalist Casey Parks' queer identity and the life history of a man named Roy Hudgins that her grandmother knew growing up in Delhi, Louisiana in the 1950s.

Parks, who herself grew up poor in rural Louisiana, sets out to illuminate the history of Roy's life through interviews with those who knew him, while grappling with the rejection she faced after coming out as gay as an adolescent.

Parks reconstructs haunting and traumatic memories at the same time she focuses on objective investigative journalism, relying on the resources of interviews, photographs, library microfilm, and an elusive diary.

"[3] In a less positive review, Alana R. Quarles of Library Journal referred to the book as "less a journey of discovery and more the account of a complicated daughter-mother relationship laden with guilt and neglect.

"[4] Michelle Hart of The New York Times praised "Parks's depiction of a queer lineage, her assertion of an ancestry of outcasts, a tapestry of fellow misfits into which the marginalized will always, for better or worse, fit.