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NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2022 by The Washington Post Boston GlobeBooklist Kirkus Reviews New York Public LibraryMinneapolis Star Tribune

Part memoir part sweeping journalistic saga As Casey Parks follows the mystery of a strangers past she is forced to reckon with her own sexuality her fraught Southern identity her tortured yet loving relationship with her mother and the complicated role of faith in her life

Most moving is Parkss depiction of a queer lineage her assertion of an ancestry of outcasts a tapestry of fellow misfits into which the marginalized will always for better or worse fit TheNew York Times Book Review

When Casey Parks came out as a lesbian in college back in 2002 she assumed her life in the South was over Her mother shunned her and her pastor asked God to kill her But then Parkss grandmother a stern conservative who grew up picking cotton pulled her aside and revealed a startling secret I grew up across the street from a woman who lived as a man and then implored Casey to find out what happened to him Diary of a Misfit is the story of Parkss lifechanging journey to unravel the mystery of Roy Hudgins the smalltown country singer from grandmothers youth all the while confronting ghosts of her own

For ten years Parks traveled back to rural Louisiana and knocked on strangers doors dug through nursing home records and doggedly searched for Roys own diaries trying to uncover what Roy was like as a personwhat he felt what he thought and how he grappled with his sense of otherness With an enormous heart and an unstinting sense of vulnerability Parks writes about finding oneself through someone elses story and about forging connections across the gulfs that divide us