Set in 1986, a year after Rock Hudson’s death brought the news of AIDS into living rooms and kitchens across America, author Carter Sickels’s second novel The Prettiest Star shines light on an overlooked part of the epidemic, those men who returned to the rural communities and families who’d rejected them. Sickels discusses his book with Wiley Cash.

My book is about my work toward structural change in agriculture. We founded this country, I say we collectively, to be governed by “We the People.” That looked good on paper, but of course we know that Jefferson didn’t really mean everybody. What we’ve had since 1776 is a grand experiment in making a representative democracy work.