The Mariposa Club — Rigoberto Gonzalez

As they embark on their final year of high school, the Fierce Foursome -- Maui, Trini, Isaac, and Liberace -- decide to do something big, something that will memorialize their friendships for when they all go their separate ways and begin their new “adult” lives.

Already accustomed to the hardships that come with being openly gay in high school (not to mention in their homes), the boys can't begin to imagine what they will be faced with when they set out to create Caliente Valley High School's first GLBTQ club.

All four boys are remarkably different, and they have been brought together for the time being by their shared feelings of being on the periphery at school, at home, and in the community. But once the Mariposa Club is formed, they will not only have a place where they belong and that is all their own, but it will be a place for future students who feel as displaced as they do.

Little do they know that when the town is rocked by a tragic homophobic incident, the high school and entire community will turn to the Mariposa Club as a symbol of their grief and fear.

Poet, author, and activist Rigoberto González has penned two poetry books; two bilingual children's books; a novel, Crossing Vines; a story collection, Men without Bliss; and a memoir, Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa, winner of the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and is on the board of directors of the National Book Critics Circle. He is an associate professor of English at Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey.