Justin Deabler grew up in Houston. He dropped out of high school when he was fifteen, went to Simon’s Rock College, and graduated from Harvard Law School. He is the General Counsel for the Queens Public Library. His debut novel “Lone Stars” follows the arc of four generations of a Texan family in a changing America. (amazon, 2021)

In “Lone Stars,” Julian Warner, a father at last, wrestles with a question his husband posed: what will you tell our son about the people you came from, now that they are gone? Finding the answers takes Julian back in time to Eisenhower’s immigration border raids, an epistolary love affair during the Vietnam War, crumbling marriages, queer migrations to Cambridge and New York, up to the disorienting polarization of Obama’s second term. And in these answers lies a hope: that by being true to ourselves―as immigrants, smart women, gay people―we find power in empathy.