1:15 PM – Saturday – Book Club

What: Shortest Way Home By: Peter Buttigieg
Host: Jerry
Where: Quatrefoil Library
When: Dec. 21 at 1:15 PM

Contact Rick for details or to subscribe to book club notices by email here.

Book Review:
Have I mentioned Buttigieg is gay? It’s a marker of just how drastically the politics around gay rights have evolved in the past decade that this fact isn’t considered immediately disqualifying in a presidential candidate. Buttigieg himself noted this shift in a recent interview: “When I got into elected office” — just seven years ago — “it was a given in my mind that you could either be out or you could be in office — not both.”

But Buttigieg has managed to do both, in Mike Pence’s Indiana of all places. After taking leave from his first term as mayor to serve in Afghanistan, Buttigieg returns home eager to be upfront about his sexuality: “Before going overseas,” he writes, I had felt comfortable being more than one person, as we all sometimes must, according to the roles we are called to play. […] But something about exposure to danger impresses upon you that a life is not only fragile but single, with one beginning and one end. It heightens the desire for your life to make sense as a whole, not just from certain angles.”

After telling his parents he’s gay, he writes an essay for the South Bend Tribune to take the news public. Notwithstanding a few internet trolls, some conservative constituents, and an anti-gay newspaper deliveryman who temporarily boycotts Buttigieg on his morning rounds, the reception is generally positive. Buttigieg goes on to win reelection with over 80 percent of the vote.
— Harrison Hill, Los Angeles Review of Books