Verbatim to the query letter (unless I figure out how to improve the query letter more later):

I’m seeking representation for PROVERBS FOR THE FORSAKEN, a contemporary YA novel.

The Parks family has raised two children in their suburban Texas home. The older one’s a total loss, but their nearly-15-year-old son, Micah Parks, is scrupulously careful, respectful, academic, and knows better than to speak when not spoken to. Micah does everything he’s told. Unfortunately, this isn’t enough to save him, because he’s gay.

When Micah makes a mistake that almost outs him at the Parks’s church, his father rushes him across state lines to a youth reform camp in Alabama. The Parks failed with their first child. Drastic measures are needed to save their second. Though Micah resolves to be a model camper, he quickly learns that this ‘reform academy’ is more like a holding pen. He can’t brown-nose his way into the staff’s good graces; they don’t have good graces. After getting to know the other teens he’s thrown in with, ‘bad kids’ with a whole host of problems, Micah realizes they don’t deserve abuse— And that means he doesn’t either. But, out of his family, the only one who agrees is his black-sheep older sister. Lacey Parks, 18, almost-wed, and newly pregnant, swoops in to save Micah, dragging all of the baggage from her own mistakes with her.

Lacey has a crazy escape plan: A marathon road trip to Missouri. She was already on the way when Micah needed rescue. It’s shocking that she came for him. They’ve never been close. How could they be, when Micah grew up determined to be everything that Lacey’s not? But if they can’t figure out how to survive without their parents, Lacey’s abusive ex-fiancé will catch up. Going back to Texas is the worst of their dwindling bad options. To make things work with the last family he has left, Micah will need to help Lacey through the darkest point of her life and learn how to love her— And himself.

Complete at 105,000 words, PROVERBS FOR THE FORSAKEN takes the hanging blade from THE DANGEROUS ART OF BLENDING IN, a dysfunctional family in the vein of ORPHEUS GIRL, and spills blood before the first page. I’m a queer person who grew up in Texas with a mom a lot like Micah’s villains. Things have gotten both better and worse since my friends and I were hiding pride pins to avoid being lectured on how queers like us are an existential threat against sacred gender roles, and above all a woman’s duty to give birth. But what’s changed the most is our shared sense of hope. This story was written to confront and vanquish an old fear of universal rejection. I hope you get something out of it.