First published in 1974, The Front Runner raced to international acclaim - the first novel about gay love to become popular with mainstream.
In 1975, coach Harlan Brown is hiding from his past at an obscure New York college, after he was fired from Penn State University on suspicion of being gay. A tough, lonely ex-Marine of 39, Harlan has never allowed himself to love another man.
Then Billy Sive, a brilliant young runner, shows up on his doorstep. He and his two comrades, Vince Matti and Jacques LaFont, were just thrown off a major team for admitting they are gay. Harlan knows that, with proper training, Billy could go to the '76 Olympics in Montreal. He agrees to coach the three boys under strict conditions that thwart Billy's growing attraction for his mature but compelling mentor. The lean, graceful frontrunner with gold-rim glasses sees directly into Harlan's heart. Billy's gentle and open acceptance of his sexuality makes Harlan afraid to confront either the pain of his past, or the challenges which lay in wait if their intimacy is exposed.
But when Coach Brown finds himself falling in love with his most gifted athlete, he must combat his true feelings for Billy or risk the outrage of the entire sports world - and their only chance at Olympic gold.
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Patricia Nell Warren is the landmark author of some of the most popular gay novels of all time. Each of her books has been a milestone in America’s understanding and acceptance of GBLT themes. Her most beloved work, The Front Runner, has sold an estimated ten million copies in ten languages. The first modern story about gay love to become an international bestseller, Warren’s celebrated saga of an ex-Marine track coach and his Olympics-bound athlete has engaged and inspired both gay and mainstream readers for over a quarter of a century. Warren’s novels have also sold heavily to libraries and are used in numerous college courses. Wildcat Press is Ms. Warren’s exclusive imprint, offering some of the best in enduring gay literature. Established in 1993, the dynamic independent publisher has released both past and present bestsellers, winning it critical acclaim. Current titles include, The Front Runner, Billy’s Boy, Harlan’s Race, The Fancy Dancer, The Beauty Queen, One Is The Sun, and The Wild Man. Dedicated to furthering free speech, Wildcat Press has been one of the plaintiffs for the ACLU in several recent landmark lawsuits, two of which went to the United States Supreme Court. Wildcat maintains that we are all one community regardless of race, creed, or sexual orientation, and that tolerance brings understanding and acceptance.
Product Details
Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Wildcat Press; 20 Anv edition (June 1, 1996)
Patricia Nell Warren has written and published professionally since 1954, at age 18. In 59 years, her subjects have ranged from women and Goddess Earth to human rights, from gay life and mixed-blood people in American history to wildlife, the environment and current events.
Now 76 years old, she was born in 1936 and raised on a Montana ranch. She worked as a Reader's Digest book editor for 15 years, on both the magazine staff and the Condensed Book Club.
Today Warren lives in Glendale, CA, where she co-owns an independent book-publishing and media company, Wildcat International and Wildcat Press.
Fiction
Since 1971 Warren has published eight novels -- several with mainstream publishers (Morrow, Bantam, Ballantine, Dial Press, Penguin) and several under her own independent imprint, Wildcat Press. The Front Runner, Harlan's Race and Billy's Boy are a landmark series that follows an evolving family through 20 years of gay life.
She also published two mainstream novels, The Last Centennial (1971) and One Is the Sun (1991).
Warren's best-known fiction work, The Front Runner, was first published by William Morrow in 1974, and became the most popular gay love story of all time. The book has sold an estimated 10 million copies worldwide and been translated into ten languages, the most recent being Complex Chinese.
Film rights of The Front Runner have been in development for some years, and received a great deal attention as one of "Hollywood's unmade gay films" during Brokeback Mountain's run-up for the Academy Awards.
Currently Warren is working on a new novel titled Wrong Side of the Tracks.
Nonfiction
Warren's newest title is her second nonfiction book. It's titled My West: Personal Writings on the American West, an anthology of nonfiction articles about Warren's roots in the historical and modern West. Published in 2011, it won an international Rainbow Award in the nonfiction category.
Warren's articles and op-eds have appeared in a variety of mainstream publications, including Atlantic Monthly, Los Angeles Times, Reader's Digest, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Modern Maturity, Persimmon Hill, New York Press, Des Moines Register, Mythosphere, Corporate Africa. She has also published in various leading gay publications.
For A & U Magazine she writes a monthly column on the politics of AIDS and public health. Online, she blogs at The Bilerico Project, the most popular and politically vociferous glbt blog on the Web.
Film Development
As a result of interest in movies based on her novels, Warren has moved into active development herself as an executive producer, in partnership with Greg Zanfardino of Moniker Entertainment. At present, she has several docudrama projects on her slate, including an Australian group's novel search for the wreck site of Amelia Earhart's aircraft in Papua New Guinea.
Activism and Politics
Warren's political activism started during the 1960s, with efforts -- while still a Reader's Digest editor -- to have American media recognize the individuality of Ukrainians and other ethnic groups in the USSR.
In the 1970s Warren was the plaintiffs' spokesperson for Susan Smith v. Reader's Digest, a landmark lawsuit that resulted in a class-action victory for women. As a former amateur athlete, Warren helped lead a group of women distance runners who forced the AAU (Amateur Athletic Union, the then governing body of amateur sports in the U.S.) to change discriminatory rules in the mid-70s.
More recently, in the free-speech realm, Warren has been a named plaintiff in both federal lawsuits over Internet censorship -- namely ACLU v. Reno (which went to the U.S. Supreme Court and resulted in a victory for the plaintiffs) and the more recent ACLU lawsuit over the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), which was also struck down as unconstitutional.
As recognition for her activism, Warren has won a number of awards, including New York City's Public Advocate Award and the Barry Goldwater Award.
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More information on Warren can be found at: www.wildcatpress.com and www.patricianellwarren.com.
The idea that THE FRONT RUNNER was the first novel to address gay men and their romantic and sexual relationships is myth. A host of novels predate it, including Gore Vidal's 1948 THE CITY AND THE PILLAR and Mary Renault's brilliant 1959 THE CHARIOTEER. By the 1960s gay characters began to crack the bestseller lists with considerable regularity, with Gavin Lambert's INSIDE DAISY CLOVER a case in point. But THE FRONT RUNNER was very much the right book at the right time by the right author--and it would become legendary as the voice of a new generation.
The Stonewall Riots, which marked a turning point in the struggle for equal rights, was barely five years old when THE FRONT RUNNER was published, and few people--including many in the gay community--had any serious context for the story Warren offered. Consequently, Warren took nothing for granted: she created that context through a series of meticulously described backgrounds, something that made the book widely accessible to mainstream readers. And when THE FRONT RUNNER hit the bookstore it proved a revelation for both homosexual and heterosexuals alike: it flew off the shelves, becoming one of the most critically lauded and widely read novels of its decade.
The story concerns Harlan, a college track coach who is rocked out of the closet when three world class athletes land on his doorstep after being expelled for homosexuality from a major university. One of the three is Billy--and Billy is everything that Harlan has both hungered for and feared: a man with whom Harlan could fall in love. Although many regard it as love story pure and simple, THE FRONT RUNNER is really a sociopolitical novel. At the time, there was little balance in public discourse on homosexuality--and as Harlan and his runners attain increasing fame they must also deal with public reaction to their increasingly open sexuality. Then as now, the price for such openness could be extremely high, and in the spotlight of the track field the price for Harlan and Billy will be beyond reckoning.
Some may feel the book is dated. The 1970s slang is so quaint! And is it really necessary to point out that gay men actually fall in love, that their relationships involve much more than sex? Is it really necessary to detail Stonewall? Do we have to go over the whole ground of being in the closet again? Surely we can take all that for granted now! Yes, we can. But one reason we can is that Patricia Nell Warren put it all on the table in the first place. The world has changed a great deal since the early 1970s, but even with the advent of AIDS, civil unions, and the controversy over same-sex marriage THE FRONT RUNNER still exerts a powerful influence. It was and is a remarkable novel, and it will doubtlessly remain so for as long as love and sexuality remain twin victims of reactionary hysteria.
Harlan Brown is an ex-Marine and a track coach. In 1974, after he is dismissed from Penn State due to rumors of an alleged homosexual romance with one of his athletes, Harlan finds himself as the track coach at Prescott, a smaller university which he discovers is a more diverse than any other school in the country. Harlan's coaching life is thrown into turmoil when three young track athletes, kicked out of another university for their openness about their sexuality, want to join his team.
One of the athletes, Billy Sive who looks to be a contender for the Montréal Olympics, piques his interest, and Harlan soon finds himself falling for the young man. Billy begins to have the same feelings for Harlan. Once they admit their feelings, they form a strong, positive relationghip face together the fear and hatred of the athletic world and society, determined to give Billy his shot at a gold medal.
First published in 1974, this became a national bestseller. Patricia Nell Warren's depiction of two gay athletes in the 1970s is filled with so much that's positive about being gay: Harlan and Billy form a strong, monogamous relationship and don't hide it from the rest of the world. (They also don't flaunt it.) They tackle many issues that gay men and women are struggling with today: gay marriage, children, gay rights. The novel also handles the societal negatives regarding homosexuality with much humanity and empathy. You can either run and hide from it, or you can stare it down, be happy with yourself.
I also liked the characters. Harlan has only recently come out and is trying to deal with his feelings and jealousies along with his memories of the past and society. Billy is calm, confident, knows who and what he is and is determined that no one is going to keep him from what makes him happy. The two of them together make a great and very realistic couple.
While it is a gay novel, it's also a sports novel. Warren was a long-distance runner herself and draws from her experiences to give a realistic view of the amateur sports world, especially when it comes to the politics of jsut being able to compete. It's a world that I found very intriguing and want to learn more about.
This is a remarkable book, one that should be read by everyone, gay and straight.
How is it that a female story teller so adeptly delved into the emotions and mind of gay men? I was 27 when I first read The Front Runner, it was published when I was only 5 years old. Even though it is a story about life set in the 70s, it is a truly remarkable tale about love, destiny, passion and the search for that special love we all seek. Harlan, the track coach at the center of the book, has paid some tough prices for coming out as a gay man. He lost a wife, a family, and yes it would be easy to say he should never have gotten married and cheating on his wife...through Ms. Warren's words, we see the pain and confusion that his sexual identity has caused him. It is not until he is into his 40s that he finds he can be out and lead a life deserving in respect & love. The tragic ending will move any heart I'm sure, gay or staright or questioning. Along with its sequels, each just as brilliant, TFR is a landmark book that is a celebration of the gay & lesbian community.
