"Slam" meets "Brokeback Mountain," "Oxford Blues," and the "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" episode "Lowdown" in Rashid Darden's debut love story about race and sexual identity. Adrian Collins is handsome, brilliant, and the vice-president of the Potomac College chapter of the NAACP. All he needs to worry about are his grades and getting the Latinos and the African-Americans to unite on campus. Oh, and concealing his desire for men. Simple. Until he meets brilliant poet Savion Cortez, who is gay too. Savion quickly guesses Adrian's secret, and a tender love affair begins-until Adrian is asked to join the service fraternity Beta Chi Phi, whose members disapprove of homosexuality but hold the touchstone of family and answers to the past Adrian has sought. And there's the ugly glimpse into fraternity hazing and the power of fraternity bonds.

Adrian's behavior in this dilemma is human, raw, real, and understandable. Darden takes us into a world and a milieu that is vivid and unexplored in contemporary literature, and oh yes, the women are strong, too. You yearn for Adrian and Savion to belong together, but understand their dilemmas.