An Episcopal priest has a fateful encounter with an Amsterdam teenager who may be a prostitute—or something else entirely. An Iowa supermarket patron repurposes Bible verses for a love note to a handsome cashier, with consequences both tragic and transformational. A disgraced seminarian shows up at his lover’s first Mass, determined to be remembered.

One way or another, the characters in The Master is Here happen to find themselves in a place larger and more interesting than many others can imagine: the intersection in the Venn diagram of Christian and gay experience. Whether there by choice or quite against their will, whether making good decisions or bad ones, whether driven by love or lust or foolishness or faith, their lives are a valuable testament to the complexities and the conundrums of the human experience, and their stories chronicle the reckonings that none of us can avoid.