Under the Rainbow
A Novel
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3.7 • 15 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
"Essential." - The New York Times Book Review
When outsiders on a mission arrive to change a small town’s attitudes, residents and newcomers alike end up transformed.
Big Burr, Kansas is the kind of place where everyone seems to know everyone—or so they think. But when a national nonprofit labels Big Burr “the most homophobic town in the U.S.” and sends in a queer task force to live and work there for two years, no one is prepared for what will ensue.
Still grieving the death of her son, Linda welcomes the newcomers, who know mercifully little about her past. Teenage Avery, furious at being uprooted from her life in L.A. and desperate to fit in at her new high school, fears it’s only a matter of time before her classmates discover her mom is the head of the task force. And Gabe, an avid hunter who has lived in Big Burr his whole life, suddenly feels as if he’s in the crosshairs.
As tensions roil the town, cratering relationships and bringing difficult truths to light, both long time residents and new arrivals must reconsider what it means to belong. Told with warmth and wit, Under the Rainbow is a poignant, hopeful articulation of our complicated humanity and the ways we can learn to live with each other and ourselves.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Laskey's pointed if didactic debut explores what happens when a small Kansas town is disrupted by outsiders. Fifteen-year-old Avery moves to Big Burr, Kans., after LBGTQ nonprofit Acceptance Across America called it the "Most Homophobic Town" in the U.S. and recruited one of her lesbian moms to lead a team of volunteers to spread tolerance. The narrative is strung together by short segments from the points of view of long-term residents and newcomers such as Avery, who fears that her mothers will be disappointed by her heterosexuality, while classmates egg her locker at school when they discover she has gay parents. Avery bonds with her sensitive classmate Zach, who stands out for not spewing hateful epithets at the volunteers sent by the nonprofit. Laskey turns the lens unsympathetically on the secretly gay Big Burr resident Gabe, who uses hunting trips as an excuse to check Grindr, and an uptight, straight housewife named Christine, who condemns a billboard showing two women holding hands. While some of the characterizations are subtle, Laskey too often relies on stereotypes of unenlightened hicks, and what begins as a nuanced novel segues into a predictable morality tale, with the outsiders imparting life lessons to those willing to listen, leaving the others mired in despair. Kansas deserves better than this.
