The Heart's Progress: A Lesbian Memoir

A unique glimpse into the growth of one woman's lesbian identityLike many lesbians, Claudia Bepko was a young woman when she first admitted to having homosexual feelings -- but it took a lifeless heterosexual marriage and a fierce attraction to a female colleague before she was able to live openly in a relationship with another woman. In this moving memoir, she relives the painful and poignant awakenings she experienced in her early life: from her blue-collar Catholic upbringing and alcoholic father to her exhilaration and confusion as she entered college during the height of the sexual revolution where she encountered her first lovers -- Molly, a fellow student, and David, whom she would eventually marry.The different among us tell our stories because we are all only human and so much need a witness to the truth, writes Bepko. Having built a career in the early years of the women's movement, she found the courage to question her heterosexuality. Approaching middle age in the midst of lesbian chic, she finds herself finally able to move from an identity shrouded in otherness to a life that celebrates the freedom and normalcy of loving whomever one is destined to love.… (more)