OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network

You'll never finish your education,' I thought, 'Fair enough,'" Garrard Conley writes. Having grown up in a strict Baptist household, Conley agreed with his parents' plan to enroll him in Love in Action, a program of "ex-gay" therapy intended to "cure" him. When his mother wondered aloud what happened if you ran out of sins to write about, Garrard thought, "What my mother didn't yet know about being gay in the South was that you never ran out of material, that being secretly gay your whole life, averting your eyes every time you saw a handsome man, praying on your knees every time a sexual thought entered your mind" meant you could spend every day repenting. The triumph of this harrowing story lies not only in the reclamation of self but also in the survival of one family's love.