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Join PFLAG Charlotte for a book talk with Jessi Hempel, author of THE FAMILY OUTING. This free event will be held via Zoom on Wednesday, January 25th from 7 - 8:15 pm (ET). We encourage you to purchase your book from Park Road Books in Charlotte or your local independent bookseller. About THE FAMILY OUTING While she was growing up, Jessi Hempel’s family appeared boringly “normal” to the outside world: attorney dad, piano teacher mom, three smart kids, church, ballet lessons, scouts. Yet, behind the closed door of their suburban home, the truth was far more complicated. Unhappiness ran deep, and its sources were complex, elusive, and confusing—not only for Jessi and her younger siblings, but for her grownup parents as well. After many years of searching, estrangement, and pain, four of the family would embrace queer identities, while the fifth would begin to process a youthful trauma that left her scarred in ways she had never understood. In a remarkable and candid memoir, THE FAMILY OUTING (HarperOne; October 4, 2022), Hempel—long acclaimed as a journalist working at the convergence of technology and culture—digs deep into her family’s particular narrative, chronicling their individual and collective paths toward accepting their authentic selves.