The Vast Fields of Ordinary is a young adult gay novel by American author Nick Burd first published in 2009. The novel depicts the summer after high school graduation for a closeted suburban teenage boy, his openly lesbian new best friend, and the two boys he is interested in dating (one a Latino football star, the other a drug dealer). The Vast Fields of Ordinary is Burd's debut novel.
The book won the American Library Association's Stonewall Book Award in the Children's and Young Adult Literature category, and was a Lambda Literary Award finalist for LGBT Children's/Young Adult literature. Booklist added the novel to its Rainbow List 2010, a bibliography of young adult books which include significant gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or questioning content. The New York Times listed it as one of the most notable books of 2009.
On the basis of this novel, Out named author Nick Burd to the "OUT 100," a list of 100 people who made important contributions to LGBTQ culture and politics in 2009.
Plot synopsis
The novel is told in the first person singular. All the narrative occurs in the present. The title comes from a line in the novel in which a young girl misquotes a line from an alternative rock band. The fictional band, Vas Deferens, is the favorite band of the main character. One of their songs is used in a TV commercial, and the girl misquotes the lyrics as "the vast fields of ordinary." The novel is prefaced with a quote from the poet and playwright E. E. Cummings: "To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting." The quote is taken from the essay "A Poet's Advice to Students," which appeared in the book E. E. Cummings, A Miscellany.
Dade Hamilton is 18 years old and trying to enjoy the summer after his high school graduation. He has a part-time job at Food World, a local supermarket. Dade has come out gay to himself, but not anyone else. His father, Ned, sells luxury automobiles and his mother, Peggy, is an art teacher at a local Roman Catholic parochial school. They live in Cedarville, a fictional city in Iowa. For several years, Peggy has struggled with depression, and is taking a large number of antidepressants. She is increasingly alienated from her upper middle class lifestyle and family. Ned, too, is alienated from his family, and has begun taking poetry classes at a local community college. Dade is a loner whose only friend is Pablo Soto, a Mexican American who is Cedarville high school's star quarterback for the football team. Since they were 16 years old, Pablo and Dade have been having sex. But Pablo considers himself heterosexual, and has a girlfriend, Judy Lockhart. Pablo and Dade are friends, but Pablo doesn't spend much time with Dade and appears to only see him as a provider of passive anal sex.
The novel opens in the last days of high school, with Dade telling Pablo that he loves him. Pablo slaps him hard across the face until Dade retracts the statement. Dade is increasingly harassed at high school by jocks and by Judy Lockhart, all of whom think he's gay. A short time later, Ned tells Dade that he is having an affair with a woman he met at his poetry class. As the school year ends, Dade attends a party hosted by the pretty Jessica Montana and her awkward, less-pretty twin sister Francesca (whom everyone belittles by calling "Fessica"). Fessica attempts to seduce Dade, and Dade leaves the party. Outside, Dade meets Alex Kincaid, a 20-year-old marijuana drug dealer. It is love at first sight for Dade. Dade discovers Alex's name and where he works. He meets Alex, and under the pretense of securing some marijuana, the two teens take a trip into the countryside that evening to obtain drugs from a man named Dingo. Dade meets Dingo, an older man who grows marijuana, and members of Dingo's rock band (all of whom appear to be slackers and drug users). Dade finally feels like he is accepted by a group of 'cool' people.