Lambda Literary Award Finalist
Transgender indie electronica singer-songwriter Rae Spoon has six albums to their credit, including I Can't Keep All of Our Secrets. This first book by Rae (who uses “they” as a pronoun) is a candid, powerful story about a young person growing up queer in a strict Pentecostal family in Alberta.
The narrator attends church events and Billy Graham rallies faithfully with their family before discovering the music that becomes their salvation and means of escape. As their father's schizophrenia causes their parents' marriage to unravel, the narrator finds solace and safety in the company of their siblings, in their nascent feelings for a girl at school, and in their growing awareness that they are not the person their parents think they are. With a heart as big as the prairie sky, this is a quietly devastating, heart-wrenching coming-of-age book about escaping dogma, surviving abuse, finding love, and risking everything for acceptance.
“First Spring Grass Fire will be meaningful to anyone who has struggled to fit in. By telling these stories—of being different, queer, raised in a rigid belief system you didn't choose, trying to be yourself within circumstances you can't control—Rae Spoon illustrates the triumph in reclaiming and controlling your own identity. This moving collection is a story of what we do to find a place, physical or intangible, that we can call home.” —National Post
“The prose is concise without ornamentation; emotionally moving because of its raw honesty. While issues of gender and sexuality certainly underline the majority of the narrator's existential despair, the book works because it pushes the reader to understand the humanity of the narrator rather than simply a trans or lesbian narrative. It demonstrates the commonality of grief, loss, fear, pain, love, and longing.”
—Lambda Literary