This is the story of Southern gays and lesbians in the twenty-year span between the end of World War II and the Stonewall Riot that sparked widespread gay rights consciousness. Across the United States, this was an era of courting and cocktail parties, Johnny Mathis and Jack Kerouac, with a Southern culture aptly depicted by Tennessee Williams-genteel attitudes and behavior covering, in a thin veneer, baser passions just barely contained. But this...