No Way Back: A Young Man's Search for Home

No Way Back is a powerful coming-of-age memoir set against the upheavals of the late 1960s. Bruce Parkinson Spang traces his early life as 'Jason', a young man caught between who he is, who he's expected to be, and the violent shifts reshaping America. Leaving behind a privileged but emotionally fraught Midwestern home, Jason enters Vanderbilt Divinity School seeking distance, purpose, and a place to belong. What he finds instead is a country on fire-civil rights battles, antiwar protests, an awakening community fighting for justice, and transformative work in the Appalachian mountains.

Through encounters with courageous activists, fellow seekers, mountain families, and the dispossessed of Nashville, Jason confronts his own fears, desires, and illusions. Stripped of familiar props-family expectations, privilege, and even certainty-he is forced to navigate identity, faith, sexuality, and moral responsibility in a world unwilling to stand still.

This is the intimate, reflective journey of a young man learning that finding home begins with finding himself.

AS A FORMER POET LAUREATE of Portland, Maine, Bruce P. Spang has published three novels, The Deception of the Thrush, (2015), Those Close Beside Me (2019)) and The River Crossed (2024). He has a new memoir: Dear Teen, Dear Poet: A Coming of Age in Letters. Warren Publisher, 2026. He wrote the libretto, "Charlie!", a musical drama about a gay man murdered by three high school boys in Bangor. He's the author of seven books of poetry, including, Twist (2025), All You'll Derive: A Caregiver's Journey (2019), Not Just Anybody (2016), Boy at the Screen Door (Moon Pie Press, 2015), To the Promised Land Grocery (Moon Pie Press, 2008), I Have Walked Through Many Lives: Young Voices-Scarborough (Moon Pie Press, 2009) The Knot, (Snow Drift Press, 2005), and Tip End of Time (Snow Drift Press, 2004). He teaches writing at the Great Smokies Writing Program at UNC in Asheville. He is a lead writer for Asheville Poetry Journal and poetry editor for the Smoky Blue Arts and Literary Journal. He lives with his husband, Myles Rightmire, and their two dogs, fifteen birds, and ten fish in Chandler, NC.For more about him, contact him at Brucepspang.wordpress.com or bspang4@gmail.com.