All the Young Men

How One Woman Risked It All to Care for the Dying

By: Ruth Coker Burks, Kevin Carr O'Leary

Narrated by: Ruth Coker Burks

'If I have one message with this book it's that we all have to care for one another. Today, not just in 1986. Life is about caring for each other, and I learned more about life from the dying than I ever learned from the living. It's in an elephant ride, it's in those wildflowers dancing on their way to the shared grave of two men in love, and it's in caring for that young man who just needed information without judgement.'

In 1986, 26-year-old Ruth Coker Burks visits a friend in hospital when she notices that the door to one of the patient's rooms is painted red. The nurses are reluctant to enter, drawing straws to decide who will tend to the sick person inside. Out of impulse, Ruth herself enters the quarantined space and begins to care for the young man who cries for his mother in the last moments of his life.

And in doing so, Ruth's own life changes forever.

As word spreads in the community that she is the only person willing to help the young men afflicted by the growing AIDS crisis, Ruth goes from being an ordinary young mother to an accidental activist. Forging deep friendships with the men she helps, Ruth works to find them housing and jobs, and then funeral homes willing to take their bodies - often in the middle of the night. She prepares and delivers meals to 'her guys,' supplementing her own income with discarded food found in the dumpsters behind supermarkets. She defies local pastors and the medical community to store rare medications for her most urgent patients and teaches sex education to drag queens after hours at secret bars. Emboldened by the weight of their collective pain, she fervently advocates for their safety and visibility, ultimately advising Governor Bill Clinton on the national HIV-AIDS crisis and in doing so becomes a beacon of hope to an otherwise spurned group of ailing gay men on the fringes of society.

Ruth kept her story a secret for years, fearful of repercussions within her deeply conservative community. But at a time when it's more important than ever to stand up for those who can't, Ruth has found the courage to have her voice - and the voices of those who were stigmatised, rejected and abandoned - heard.

©2020 Ruth Coker Burks (P)2020 Orion Publishing Group

Critic reviews

"This book will make you love her as much as I do." (Former President Bill Clinton)

"Breath-taking courage and compassion [...]a beautiful book." (The Sunday Times)

"A renegade Florence Nightingale cares for the ill in a remarkable tale of compassion and combating prejudice." (Guardian)

I don't get it.

I don't know this woman, and I don't want to just shit-talk her, but I feel like most of this is just made up.
It all just sounds so so incredibly embellished, starting with the cemetery she conveniently owned that immediately hits as very fanfic-y. Especially once she starts interacting with dying men, the way she talked to them and they talked to her was just weirdly off, I can't describe it. I had a very hard believing any of it.
(maybe this had something to do with the audiobook, which she voices herself. Technically, I feel like she did a fine job, but on the other hand, her tone was kind of condescending and fake-nice. Reminded me vaguely of a pissed-off kindergarten teacher.)
The only parts that I believed were the chapters where she doesn't talk about AIDS at all, and just complains about her scumbag ex-husband and inlaws. I didn't care about that though, because that's not why I bought this book. Also, Ruth often meanders wildly off topic in a very old-person way, which I was willing to look past because that's what she is, but at a certain point, I just had to skip when she started talking about Hot Springs again. sorry.
I usually wouldn't have bought something revolving around gay men if it's written by a straight woman, so I don't know what possessed me this time, but I regret it.
(and the bit with Bill Clinton was weird. There's this part where she's on the phone and goes: "Bill? Bill who?" and he says "Bill from church, I just wanted to let you know that I'm going to run for office" and she says "That's nice, sweety" or something. Why did they keep that in?)
Apparently, everyone else loves this book? I just don't get it.