They Don’t Know Steve

The summer of 1971 marks a quiet unraveling in the life of seventeen-year-old Steven Colston. Beneath the ordinary rhythms of small-town life, Steve is caught in a private storm. He adores his girlfriend, yet he cannot silence the pull he feels toward other boys—an inner truth he barely understands himself, and one his friends are beginning to sense with unsettling clarity. As he strains to navigate a world with no language for what he feels, the boundaries of his identity begin to blur.

But the turmoil within him is mirrored by a darker tension at home. Steve’s stepfather carries a festering grudge against Steve’s mother, a vindictive motive woven into the very foundation of their marriage. The man’s simmering cruelty toward Steve and his siblings grows harder to ignore, and the way his gaze lingers on Steve’s younger sister sends a chill deeper than fear. Driven by equal parts protectiveness and desperation, Steve becomes determined to unearth the truth his family has been forced to live beneath—no matter where it leads or what it costs him.