If it wasn t for Bard College at Simon s Rock, author and lawyer Justin Deabler may have never met his husband, gone on to become a civil rights lawyer, or written his first novel, Lone Stars. That place saved my life, he simply said of the private liberal arts college in Great Barrington, where then 15-year-old Deabler found himself after dropping out of his Texas high school. It was the 1990s, he said, and being a gay teenager in a large, public high school in Houston had him fearing for his physical safety and his mental health. My sophomore year, I just stopped going to school, he said in a phone interview. Deabler s mother, a professor at a junior college, let him listen in on her classes, but quickly pointed out that it wasn t going to work long term. A family friend then told him about Simon s Rock s scholarship program, and the rest, they say, is history â history that Deabler later found inspiration in to craft Lone Stars, a semi-autobiographical novel that f
Book World: In Justin Deabler s Lone Stars, a gay teen escapes the suffocating social norms of his Texas hometown lmtonline.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from lmtonline.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.