From a young, gay environmentalist, a searing coming-of-age memoir set against the arid landscape of rural North Dakota, where homosexuality “seems akin to a ticking bomb.”

“I am a child of the American West, a landscape so rich and wide that my culture trembles with terror before its power.” So begins Taylor Brorby’s Boys and Oil, a haunting, bracingly honest memoir about growing up gay amidst the harshness of rural North Dakota, “a place where there is no safety in a ravaged landscape of mining and fracking.”

In visceral prose, Brorby recounts his upbringing in the coalfields; his adolescent infatuation with books; and how he felt intrinsically different from other boys. Now an environmentalist, Brorby uses the destruction of large swathes of the West as a metaphor for the terror he experienced as a youth. From an assault outside a bar in an oil boom town to a furtive romance, and from his awakening as an activist to his arrest at the Dakota Access Pipeline, Boys and Oil provides a startling portrait of an America that persists despite well-intentioned legal protections.

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The stress and culture of today's college scene does not seem to lend itself to the peace of a traditional church-but this collection of essays illustrates how spirituality not only survives, but thrives in such circumstances. For the twenty-one young adults who contribute to this volume, educational and spiritual development are intertwined; faith was crucial to their college experience. Through deeply reflective personal narratives, these essays uphold the spirit of wrestling with faith as a means for growth, as each author shares how they confronted the role of religion in college and emerged with a profound understanding of how it fundamentally shaped them. Kissing in the Chapel, Praying in the Frathouse covers the extremes of the college experience-the hilarious, the troubling, and everything in between-as told by emerging young voices at a time when writing about college students comes largely from generalized, external points of view. The stories contained within dispel the myth that members of the Millennial Generation are universally lazy and apathetic; they clearly demonstrate the self-awareness and empathy of their authors as they embark on the path of lifelong spiritual growth. Not ones to live life halfway, these essays open up new possibilities to those struggling with faith in any context, and are certain to encourage reflection and introspection in any reader.