Rural America deserves more than an elegy: a powerful story of hope, resilience, and political resistance where you least expect it, from Idaho’s first openly LGBTQ+ lawmaker
“One doesn’t need to be queer to feel seen, heard, and empowered. . . . A reminder that activists need to believe that the impossible can happen.”—Carole King, singer, songwriter, activist, and author of A Natural Woman
Cole LeFavour was 11 years old when their hippie parents moved the family to a guest ranch in Idaho. Hours to the north, as the LeFavours unpacked pots and pans, Richard Butler dreamed of establishing a white separatist nation. It’s here, in one of the reddest states on the map, where Cole learned to raise ducklings, hike the wilderness alone, and build political resistance where you’d least expect it.
This is the story rural America deserves to tell—and that the rest of the country needs to hear. Follow LeFavour’s journey from their 2-mile walk to the school bus along a dirt road to their monumental election as Idaho’s first openly queer state senator. Cole recounts anti-apartheid protests at Berkeley, the solitary life of a fire lookout, and the gravitational pull of unexpected romance and loss. In the Arms of Mountains is a memoir with dirt under its nails and heart on its sleeve. It shatters the carefully constructed “monolithic heartland” myth and rewrites Hillbilly Elegy’s bleak epitaph.
Haunting, hopeful, and full of fight, Cole’s story reminds us of what’s possible when we look beyond red and blue, right and left, to meet each other at the edge of the wild.
“Cole LeFavour, Idaho’s first openly queer state senator and a leader in the ‘Add the Words’ campaign, doesn’t just add words here—they test them. Break them. Hurt and heal with them. In the Arms of Mountains is a fierce, earnest portrait of rural queer life that insists on beauty, resistance, and wholeness in places America too often overlooks.”
—Willie Carver Jr., author of Gay Poems for Red States
Author’s Note
Prologue
PART 1: LAND
1. Woody Creek. 1964. Woody Creek, Colorado
2. Delicate Things. 1976. Stanley, Idaho
3. The Ivory Room. 1979–1982. Stanley, Idaho
4. Radical. 1983–1986. Berkeley, California
5. Wilderness. 1986–1992. Frank Church—River of No Return, Idaho
6. Mercury. 1992, October. Nevada Test Site
7. Bigots. 1993–1994. Boise, Idaho
PART 2: LOVE
8. Carol. 2000–2003. Boise, Idaho
9. Pilot Fish. 2003. Boise, Idaho
10. Conformity. 2004. Boise, Idaho
11. Beast. 2005. Idaho House of Representatives, Boise
12. Veil. 2006–2007. Idaho State Capitol, Boise
13. Poofta. 2007–2008. Boise, Idaho
14. Power. 2008–2010. Boise, Idaho
15. Body. 2011. Boise, Idaho
16. Add the Words. 2011–2012. Idaho State Capitol, Boise
PART 3: FORGIVENESS
17. Flattery. 2012, March. Boise, Idaho
18. Breaking the Law. 2012–2014. Boise, Idaho
19. Goat Pasture. 2014, February. Boise, Idaho
20. The Closet. 2014, March 18. Idaho State Capitol, Boise
21. Testify. 2014–2015. Boise, Idaho
22. The Fourth Dimension. 2015, May. Napa, California
23. Aspen Trees. 2016–2025. Boise, Idaho
Acknowledgments