The Front Runner

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The Front Runner is a 1974 novel by Patricia Nell Warren. The book, considered by some as a classic example of LGBT literature of the period, is a love story exploring issues relating to homosexuals in American sports.^[1]

Warren completed Harlan's Race, a sequel to The Front Runner, in 1994. A third book, Billy's Boy, (1997) also continues elements of the story introduced in The Front Runner.

[edit] Synopsis

Cross country coach Harlan Brown is hiding from his past at an obscure New York college, after he was fired from Penn State University for reasons we discover later. One day, the Dean of the school calls him to his office to inform him that three elite runners from one of America's premier cross country schools are transferring to his little college and want to run for him. Brown is overwhelmed at the prospect that these three young men, of whom he has heard much as they are premier US runners, will now be wearing his school colors.

But what secret do they hold that makes them want to be runners at his small school? Why did they transfer? Drugs? A problem with grades? What? The answers unfold before us as they recount how the coach at the previous University found two of them a little too frisky one day and expelled them. The third has come for support, as he could easily be discovered also.

Harlan Brown 's worst nightmare has come to pass. He has three runners who are in their prime, and gay, coming to him for his help. Gay also, the rumours being the reason for his own dismissal, Harlan has no doubts that he will be the one to shelter them. However, he never considers that he will fall in love with one, a love that will send the boys reeling into a world that is both ominous and uncertain, where all that can come of it is disaster.