Book cover, male and female embracing in bed, with title and author listed.

“Maybe marriage, like a novel, should be an act of imagination.”

The Maps They Gave Us is the story of a man and woman who fall in love again on their way to get a divorce. Written from the perspective of a queer (bisexual) man, in a voice that is vulnerable, tender, lucid, and funny, the memoir is “Will and Grace” with kids, cats, and a mortgage. Wandering the forests, mountains, and hot springs of the Pacific Northwest, they search for ways to improvise. They encounter other couples, fellow travelers, also struggling with prescribed forms of marriage. They find a quirky, compassionate couples therapist who dares utter the words “open marriage.” Threaded through this story of a marriage gone awry are the voices of feminist and queer ancestors, lighting a new way. Offering an expansive sense of possibility and hope, The Maps They Gave Us will appeal to the sophisticated reader who appreciates memoir that uses art in its consideration of a life. 

Publication Date: February 2025

What People Are Saying

  • I laughed, I cried, I turned inside out, remembering that desire, identity, and family can be any story we want them to be if we open our hearts back up to adaptation and evolution.

    —Lidia Yuknavitch, author of Thrust and The Chronology of Water

  • ...Nothing short of miraculous ... Vulnerable, candid, and expansive, this book is both a tribute to distinctive relationships and—astonishing surprise—a manual for how to love.

    —Paul Lisicky, author of Song So Wild and Blue: A Life with the Music of Joni Mitchell

  • ...Scott offers a new, emancipatory vision of family, one that is expansive enough for ever-evolving desire, no matter how complicated.

    —Christie A. Tate, author of Group: How One Therapist and a Circle of Strangers Saved My Life