In the Dark all Cats are Gray

Winner of the 2025 Orison Fiction Prize

Forthcoming publication by Orison Books, early 2027.

Tessa Fontaine, author of The Red Grove, writes: "In the Dark All Cats Are Gray is a deeply-feeling novel about the ways we come to accept who we are. The novel follows a young man who, feeling unmoored and afraid of his sexuality as a teenager, finds a place of devotion and belonging in the Jewish Orthodox community. But being an outsider—and being afraid to accept his own queer sexuality—throws Herschel into a difficult world of navigating who he is, and who he wants to be. This is a beautiful novel about faith and belonging, and the winding road we all must traverse to make sense of the multi-faceted components of our identity. I admire this writer's willingness to look at hard questions without providing simple answers, and to construct such a propulsive coming-of-age story that asks this important question: who do we get to become, if the pieces of who we are don't align in the world we want to live inside? How do we then live with all our truths?"

~

While many queer adolescents flee religious fundamentalism, the narrator of In the Dark All Cats Are Gray runs toward it, leaving his homophobic New Jersey hometown at fifteen to join Brooklyn’s ultra-Orthodox Hasidic community in the hope that faith might change his sexuality. Swept up in the vast bal teshuva phenomenon of the 1970s, Herschel joins thousands of young Jews who abandon suburban comforts and secular ambitions for an all-consuming, ultra-Orthodox way of life in search of a messianic future. But his inner turmoil results in 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. The narrator’s journey toward self-acceptance and hard-won liberation from the demands of religious and secular orthodoxies speaks to the enduring conflict between belonging and authenticity.

An essay summarizing my own journey was published in Tablet Magazine (June 2020), and I was a finalist in the 2024 Writers League of Texas Manuscript Contest.