LANDSCAPE IN LAVENDER: A YOUNG MAN’S SEARCH FOR HIS GAY IDENTITY traces Brooks’s roller-coaster youthful quest to battle veiled, covert homophobia; launch a design career; win freedom; and cross racial barriers to find lasting love.

Influenced by his artistic and iconoclastic French grandmother, Brooks moved to Paris to paint and study art history. On the way there, a chance visit to a picture-book English country estate eventually led him to pursue a career in landscape architecture. But when he finally gained the courage to come out at age 26, his professional ambition clashed with his adventurous spirit. One day he was designing landscapes for ‘80s rock-star architects, IM Pei and Partners; the next day, he boarded a plane to San Francisco in search of gay freedom.

Arriving in the Bay Area on the cusp of the AIDS pandemic, four years after gay rights icon Harvey Milk was assassinated, Brooks became torn between satisfying his lust and seeking lasting love. He danced in Haight-Ashbury discos and cruised for “Mister Right” in the Castro, all while searching in vain for his place in a vast, abstract entity called “the gay community.”

Magnetized by the beauty of African American men, he joined “Black and White Men Together,” hoping to untangle the racist threads in interracial relationships. There he met his first great love, a Black factory-worker, but he could not know that their love would throw him into the greatest challenge he would ever face.

Brooks’s adventures taught him that freedom demands constructing one’s own morality in the face of social ostracism, that loss is an inherent attribute of life, and that the need to belong can be just as urgent as the longing for love.

Coming-out books often focus on bullying (Darnell L. Moore’s NO ASHES IN THE FIRE) or on religious and family oppression (Garrard Conley’s BOY ERASED), but explore little about the characters’ lives afterwards. By contrast, LANDSCAPE IN LAVENDER takes a deep dive into the dynamics of interracial gay relationships, offering an expansive take on what it means to be gay from one whose generation lost so many to AIDS.

Praise for LANDSCAPE IN LAVENDER:

“In this honest, heartwarming, and heartbreaking tale, Kolb beautifully captures what it was like to be gay during the AIDS era. I cheered, I cried, and those two things made this memoir one of my favorites of all time.”

—Valerie J. Brooks, author of 1 Last Betrayal

“Landscape in Lavender is more than a story of one man’s sexual self-discovery; it’s the story of an entire era in America. No matter who you are, you’ll see yourself in this wonderful, entertaining, and inspiring memoir.”

—William Kenower, author of Fearless Writing and Everyone Has What It Takes

Brooks will be interviewed about LANDSCAPE IN LAVENDER on The Artsy Raven Podcast on April 13, 2026: The Artsy Raven – Home of a curious bird! Stay tuned for more information and a link to the recording!