While many queer adolescents flee religious fundamentalism, fifteen-year-old Herschel runs toward it. Coming of age in the 1970s, he leaves his homophobic New Jersey hometown to join Brooklyn's ultra-Orthodox Hasidic community in the hope that faith might change his sexuality. But instead of finding transformation, he is driven into a double life shaped by failed arranged marriages, conversion therapy, and rejection by both religious and gay communities for refusing full conformity. Drawing on the author's own experience, this novel explores what communities demand in exchange for inclusion-and what a closeted teenager is willing to sacrifice. Herschel's journey toward self-acceptance and hard-won liberation from the demands of both religious and secular orthodoxies speaks to the enduring conflict between belonging and authenticity.