Overview

The Boundary Waters chronicles the unfolding and sometimes comic relationship between Raymona Washington Goldberg and Matthew Pierson. Raymona is an African American woman adopted as an infant by Jewish father and a German Catholic mother during a Freedom Ride in the 1960's. She spends her time barricaded in her Upper East Side rent controlled apartment in New York City, afraid to be contaminated by the stories lurking in the most common circumstances. Matthew is a gay man who geographically lives in Minneapolis but psychically inhabits a world of romantic fantasies. Matthew distracts himself by recounting romantic stories in which he becomes entangled. Their phone conversations provide a hygienic boundary through which Raymona experiences the world and Matthew has an audience. Their relationship takes a dramatic turn when Matthew entangles himself with three other gay men who are going to The Boundary Waters in Minnesota. One of the men is at the end stage of AIDS. Matthew is quite suddenly captured in an adventure in which wishful happy endings lose all meaning. Without Matthew's stories droning on the phone, Raymona becomes desperate and ventures outside her apartment, taking an epic journey on the subway. There she begins to awaken to the complex and often heartbreaking stories of her ancestors. Not only does the boundary between Raymona and Matthew start shifting, but both characters begin exploring the carefully guarded boundaries in their own lives. Their stories interact in a kind of synchrony as they stumble through the comedy and tragedy of the human condition.

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Gerry Huerth is a 74 year old person who has creatively responded to being an outsider and in that process has learned to be an effective advocate for people who face the challenges of working with systems that may not be responsive to their hopes and needs. Fifty years ago he was an early member of FREE, the first Gay and Lesbian college organization in this country.He also worked as an RN in many healthcare systems. These nursing experiences include psychiatric nursing, working with drug addicted mothers and infants in Harlem New York, volunteering for The Farm Workers Union in California, being on the board of a very early hospice in Maine, volunteering to do massage for people with AIDS, and collaborating to create a personal care service for people with mental illness living in the community. He also worked in a community college as an adjunct instructor teaching and empowering students who faced challenges to academic learning such as racism, poverty, violence and alternate learning styles. In that context he helped to create a Nonviolent Communication Task Force, a college Pow Wow, a Community Organizing Course, Student Leadership Initiatives and served as faculty advisor for The Queer Student Organization.

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