When Scott Terry was ten, he embraced the Jehovah's Witness faith and their prediction that the world would soon end. As an adolescent, he prepared for Armageddon and prayed for God to strip away his growing attraction to other young men. By adulthood, Terry found himself no longer believing in the promised apocalypse. Over time, he left the Witness religion and became a cowboy, riding bulls in the rodeo. He overcame the hurdles of parental abuse, religious extremism, and homophobia and learned that Truth is a concept of honesty rather than false righteousness.

Cowboys, Armageddon, and The Truth: How a Gay Child was Saved from Religion offers an illuminating glimpse into a child’s sequestered world of abuse, homophobia, and religious extremism. Scott Terry’s memoir is a compelling, poignant and occasionally humorous look into the Jehovah’s Witness faith-a religion that refers to itself as The Truth—and a brave account of Terry’s successful escape from a troubled past.

Seeking comfort in the isolation of the western landscape, young single mother Pansy Blackwell brings her son Butch to the Siskiyou Mountains. Fully engulfed in the Jehovah’s Witnesses assurances for a soon-to-arrive end of the world, Pansy raises her son to conform to the constrictive requirements of their religion. But as Butch discovers the wonders of the world around him with an endlessly patient and kindhearted rancher, he embraces the cowboy culture and struggles to live as his authentic self.

In the late 20th Century, rural communities in America were often hostile to the rising-awareness of LGBT people, and Butch is soon cast aside by his church for homosexuality. In The Gift, Scott Terry crafts a memorable and historically-accurate tale of religious extremism and the struggle for acceptance, before the truth of those times are swept under the forgotten rug of history.