For “Beard” author Kelly Foster Lundquist, the signs were there.

Her husband reminded her of Montgomery Clift (gay), they moved to the rainbow-striped Chicago neighborhood known as Boystown (gay), their courtship features him repeatedly saying some version of “You don’t know the real me” (gay) and most of their friends were gay men. These signs, and many more, became apparent later on — after the Twin Cities woman’s five-year marriage to a gay man ended.

“Beard” is Lundquist’s sometimes painful, usually hilarious account of that time, a combo that begins with a list of qualities often attributed to women like her (called “beards”) who often are the butt of jokes:

“She is short (I’m 5′3″). She is plump (me too). She is sweet (usually). She is plain (as I sometimes feel). She is dumb (as I have often felt or been made to feel). Beards can be shaved, washed down a drain, swept with the meaty flesh of a palm into a bathroom garbage can. We exist to be cheated on."

Lundquist, who teaches writing at North Hennepin Community College in Brooklyn Park, writes “Beard” from a remove of two decades. Now married to her second husband, she reflects on the mistakes she and her first husband, Devin, made when they were young and confused.

Dedicated to Devin “for the trying and the telling,” the memoir is not about score-setting or blame-assigning (although you may be inclined to blame, when Devin is hooking up with male friends while his straight wife is stuck at home in one of the country’s gayest neighborhoods). Instead, it’s an attempt to figure out what combination of insecurity, religious confusion and misplaced optimism led Lundquist to accept, for such a long time, less than she deserved.

In addition to its abundant humor, “Beard” is a remarkably generous book. The memoirist is the main character, of course, but a big part of understanding her behavior is understanding where Devin was coming from as he attempted to do what he thought a straight man would do. That’s where the “trying” of the dedication comes in.

“He’d been trying his whole life. He tried so hard he landed himself in the ER with chest pains three times before he even graduated high school. He tried so hard he’d gone to therapy for most of his adolescence. He tried so hard his entire abdomen had been filled with stress-induced shingles by the age of twenty-four. He’d prayed the prayers. He’d walked the aisles. He’d asked again and again and again to be changed, to be healed, to be redeemed.”

“Beard” is a coming-out book, and not just for Devin. Over the course of it, Lundquist also figures out who she is and what she wants. And, perhaps most importantly for readers of her beautifully written memoir, how her story might help others who recognize parts of themselves in it.

Beard

By: Kelly Foster Lundquist.

Publisher: Eerdmans, 278 pages.

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