Book excerpt: Boy From the North Country is a humorous, poignant, and sometimes painful memoir. Written from the perspective of a gay psychologist who survived growing up in rural Northern New York after being abandoned by his father, this is a story about finding healing in mindfulness, accepting and recovering from trauma, and getting about the business of living. In this powerful self-help memoir, Dr. Durant takes us from the winding backroads of Northern New York while describing white-knuckle tales of parental volatility. Told with the energy and suspense of a car chase, the book careens from stories of childhood innocence in Upstate New York, to the late-night parties in gay San Francisco in an attempt to tell us how one man finds himself navigating back from the isolation imposed by trauma. It is a story of survival. Part Beautiful Thing, part A Place at the Table, Boy From the North Country is written by a clinical psychologist who learned how to survive as a gay kid in rural America...the hard way. Combining insights from his studies of trauma as a psychologist, his own meditation on the trials of his life, and from the personal narratives told to him by his patients at his Manhattan practice, Dr. Durant’s story provides both a cautionary tale on what happens when we abandon the needs of our gay kids, and offers a bit of hope for those struggling to survive.