PRAYERS FOR BOBBY: A Mother’s Coming to...

PRAYERS FOR BOBBY: A Mother’s Coming to Terms With the Suicide of Her Gay Son by Leroy Aarons (HarperSan Francisco: $12, 271 pp., illustrated). In 1983, 19-year-old Bobby Griffith’s inability to accept his sexuality drove him to suicide. As his fundamentalist mother dealt with her grief, she became an outspoken advocate of the rights of gay teenagers. Condemned by the members of her own church, Mary Griffith declares, “I would rather be branded a heretic while helping a child of God out of the gutter of this world, where the church and I have thrown them, than to pass by on the other side muttering under our breath, ‘The wages of sin is death.’ ” Aarons traces both the depression that led to Bobby’s death and Mary’s revolt against the values she once accepted, but it is Mary’s plain-spoken statements that make this account so moving.