"Under the Rainbow," by Celia Laskey

The novel “Under the Rainbow” (Riverhead, 2020), by Celia Laskey, begins with an unlikely plot device: An LGBT group sends a “queer task force” to live for two years in a town that has been billed “The Most Homophobic Town in the U.S.” Their task is to try to change people’s minds. Of course it is hard, and they suffer many setbacks, but – and this is predictable, right? – they start to make some inroads. First, there are of course closeted queer people in the town (“Big Burr, Kansas”), and they gradually, tentatively, make contact with members of the task force, and some even start to join in on the group's work. Second, some townspeople are won over as they get to know the visitors. Although this plot could go very wrong, in seeming too predictable, it manages to approach that state but not go over the line. The characters seem genuine, and the artificial original premise yields real-feeling situations and relationships. The novel is in fact heartwarming, and that is OK; the author has not taken the easy way there, and therefore has earned the book’s emotional status.