Remembering Allen

For readers who loved A Little Life, The Great Believers, and Lessons in Chemistry.

In his final days, Allen Sawyer has one request: Tell my story.

For forty-five years, Allen lived with purpose. As a beloved high school English teacher, he saw the invisible students, the misfits, the outcasts, the ones everyone else overlooked. He showed them that being different wasn't something to hide.

But Allen's story wasn't simple. It was built on heartbreak and grace, betrayal and forgiveness. When his sister Emma arrives at his hospice bedside, he asks her to remember it all: the childhood fort that collapsed, the first love that destroyed him, the HIV diagnosis that could have ended everything but instead became his greatest teacher.

Over two weeks, Allen and Emma revisit a life marked by courage and contradiction. A seven-year love affair that ended in betrayal. A choice to come out as HIV-positive when it could have cost him his career. Sixteen years of turning pain into purpose, showing thousands of students that survival isn't enough, you have to choose too truly live.
Remembering Allen is a story about what we leave behind. About the light we create when we refuse to let darkness win. About legacy built not from perfection, but from the grace.