Indieland sees excellent LGBTQ stories in a wide range of genres, including picture books. A gay teenager, a transgender professor, and a gay king—all facing weighty challenges—appear in these Indie works with Kirkus stars.
In James Mulhern’s novel Give Them Unquiet Dreams, a 14-year-old boy named Aiden Glencar deals with his gay sexuality, Irish Catholic grandmother, and the second sight he shares with his mother. While he schemes to free his mom from an asylum, Aiden sees bizarre ghosts in the Boston streets. Throughout these upheavals, his older brother, Martin, remains a supportive figure in Aiden’s turbulent world. “A luminous, beautifully told fairy tale grounded in history and elevated by spirit,” our reviewer writes.
Nickie Farrell returns to her Virginia alma mater, Windfield College, as a transgender professor with a complex past in Iolanthe Woulff’s debut literary novel, She’s My Dad. During her college years, Nickie presented herself as a man. Meanwhile, Collie Skinner, a waiter, discovers that his biological father was a Windfield student who later vanished. Soon, a campus reporter notices that both Collie and Nickie have unusual heterochromatic eyes. Our critic calls this work “a deft and nuanced study in contradictions, clashes, and mismatches.”
A monarch dreams of adopting an infant in the picture bookAll Is Assuredly Well by Professor Gore and Maestro Wilson. One day, King Phillip the Good decides that he and his husband, Don Carlos, “need a little princess, a tiny baby girl!” and wishes on the Blue Star. The ruler eventually travels into the woods on a perilous quest to find a princess. His exploits, shown in Angela F.M. Trotter’s colorful images, even involve a bear. According to our reviewer, this volume offers “sweet characters, skillful storytelling, and knockout illustrations.”
Myra Forsberg is an Indie editor.
