The Prettiest Star

A Kirkus Best Book of 2020 * Finalist for the Southern Book Prize * Best LGBT Book of 2020 by O Magazine * One of the Women's National Book Association's 2020 Great Group Reads Selections * EW's 50 Most Anticipated Books of 2020 * BookRiot's "Most Anticipated LGBTQ Books of 2020" * Lambda Literary's "Most Anticipated LGBTQ Books of May 2020" * Salon's "Best and boldest new must-read books for May" * BookPage's "19 can't-miss reads from independent publishers" * Garden & Gun's "Best Books of May" * Logo NewNowNext's "11 Queer Books We Can't Wait to Read This Spring"

In this "brutally fresh kind of homecoming novel," (Entertainment Weekly) Brian Jackson returns to his small Appalachian hometown and the family who rejected him. Carter Sickels's stunning literary achievement "deserves a place in the canon of AIDS literature alongside the likes of Larry Kramer and Rebecca Makkai" (Los Angeles Review of Books).

The story of Brian's return to small-town Ohio is told in a chorus of voices: Brian's mother Sharon; his fourteen-year-old sister, Jess, as she grapples with her brother's mysterious return; and the video diaries Brian makes to document his final summer. Written in prose that seeks "to answer without flinching away from ugliness and without demonizing the ignorant" (Salon), The Prettiest Star offers an urgent portrait of a family in the center of a national crisis, in order to tell a unique story about the politics and fragility of the body, and to explore the bounds of family and redemption.