The Spring Before Obergefell

Description

Winner of the 2025 Lambda Literary Award

The James Alan McPherson Prize for the Novel, AWP Award Series Winner

It’s not easy for anyone to find love, let alone a middle-aged gay man in small-town America. Mike Breck works multiple part-time jobs and bickers constantly with his father, an angry conservative who moved in after Mike’s mother died. When he’s not working or avoiding his father, Mike burns time on hookup apps, not looking for anything more. Then he meets a local guy, Dave, just as lonely as he is, and starts to think that maybe he doesn’t have to be alone. Mike falls hard, and in a moment of intimacy, his pent-up hopes for a relationship rush out, leading him to look more honestly at himself and his future.

Winner of the James Alan McPherson Prize for the Novel, Ben Grossberg’s The Spring before Obergefell is about real guys who have real problems, yet still manage to find connection. Funny, serious, meditative, and hopeful, The Spring before Obergefell is a romance–but not a fairytale.

Binding Type: Paperback
Author: Ben Grossberg
Published: 10/01/2024
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9781496240347
Pages: 254
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 0.80″ H x 8.10″ L x 5.30″ W

About the Author
Ben Grossberg is the author of four books of poetry, My Husband Would, Space Traveler, Underwater Lengths in a Single Breath, and Sweet Core Orchard, winner of the Lambda Literary Award.