The Backlot Gay Book Forum discussion

You & Me
By Tal Bauer
Published by the author, 2022
Five stars

This gets top marks from me because, quite frankly, it made me weep quite a lot by the end. I think of Tal Bauer as a writer of high-stress action stories with a romance at the center. This one is certainly not that kind of high-stress (no guns, no political intrigue); but there was plenty of anxiety that touched me where I live, as a father and a husband.

At the center of the story is Luke Hale, who lives in the small river town of Last Falls, Texas. It has been a year since the death of his wife, a year that has found him increasingly estranged from his teenaged son Emmet. Details are given sparingly, but right from the start we know that the marriage was not happy, and that Luke has a very low opinion of himself.

Then Luke, desperate to make some connection with his son, volunteers to be part of the most-moms support group for the local high school football program in which Emmet plays. He is welcomed and encouraged by the only other dad on the mom squad, Landon Larsen. Turns out Landon’s son Bowen is Emmet’s best friend—something his father did not know. It’s a great set-up, and is followed by a number of surprises as the plot unfolds.

I have to say, it would never have dawned on me to portray Texas (even the exurbs of Dallas) as a highly gay-friendly part of our nation; especially when so much of the narrative revolves around football. Bauer makes it work, to the point that even I, a diehard Easterner who learned all I know about sports from my enthusiast husband, found myself caught up in the drama of small-town-Texas football culture. Bauer draws us into Luke’s experience as a volunteer, surrounded by Texas moms he’s never before interacted with, and (most importantly) mentored by Landon, a single dad, long divorced from his Mormon wife in Utah.

Bauer has a particular fascination with men who have lived otherwise straight lives who discover something about themselves they’d never considered. This is the kind of trope that can trigger my “gay for you” twitch. In my 68 years I’ve met plenty of bisexual or gay men who left marriages and children in middle-life for another man; but I’ve never encountered one who had no inkling at all that he might ever be drawn to someone of the same sex. However, Bauer makes Luke’s own internal dialogue about this phenomenon believable and thoughtful. His personal circumstances make his situation plausible, and his evolving relationship with Landon is heartwarming and joyous, even as his relationship with his son thaws. Because Bauer is so good at hashing out complex feelings, the idea that a distracted Kinsey 1 might be surprised by love at forty is, well, compelling.

Bauer’s sympathetic and admirable characters are easy to fall for, and even his most violent storylines have ultimately relied on love. And who can possibly object to that? This book made me reconsider some of my own assumptions and remind myself that it’s a big country and that we are everywhere.