All the Young Men

A Memoir of Love, AIDS, and Chosen Family in the American South

“My friend Ruth Coker Burks is one of the most amazing people I know. The care she gave HIV-positive gay men in and around our hometown of Hot Springs, Arkansas during the desperate early days of the AIDS crisis helped them live and die with dignity in the face of stigma and discrimination. In All the Young Men, Ruth tells their stories and hers with the same warmth, wit, grace, and gumption that I have admired for decades. This book will make you love her as much as I do.” (President Bill Clinton)

In 1986, 26-year-old Ruth is visiting a friend at the hospital when she notices that the door to one of the hospital rooms is painted red. She witnesses nurses drawing straws to see who will tend to the patient inside, all of them reluctant to enter the room. Out of impulse, Ruth herself enters the quarantined space and immediately begins to care for the young man who cries for his mother in the last moments of his life. Before she can even process what she’s done, word spreads in the community that Ruth is the only person willing to help these young men afflicted by AIDS, and she is called upon to nurse them.

As she forges deep friendships with the men she helps, she works tirelessly to find them housing and jobs, even searching for funeral homes willing to take their bodies - often in the middle of the night. She cooks meals for tens of people out of discarded food found in the dumpsters behind supermarkets, stores rare medications for her most urgent patients, teaches sex ed to drag queens after hours at secret bars, and becomes a beacon of hope to an otherwise spurned group of ailing gay men on the fringes of a deeply conservative state.

©2020 Ruth Coker Burks (P)2020 Audible, Inc.

An emotional history lesson

I could not stop listening the Ruth's story. Everyday I was moved to tears by her words. This story is reminding us all of the fear and hatefulness in people caused by ignorance. I was not familiar with her story or this book but saw this book cover posted on social media by a celebrity I follow. I looked up the synopsis and immediately purchased. This is a book I will never forget. It is told beautifully and honestly. She tells of us of her journey helping those in the south who were discarded by their families, discarded by their community discarded by the medical profession and how she influenced her community to help her help others. I am forever changed by her story. She takes us back to a time I had forgotten. There are so many levels to this story. The story of her helping others, the story of the medical community and bias in the drs and nurses. The story of her as a mom and the relationship with her daughter. BRAVO TO ALL WHO BROUGHT THIS BOOK TO US. The publishers, the people who helped document it are hero's in my mind.

Must Read!

You will laugh, Smile, and cry listening to this story. A life truly lived, with love at the core.

An amazing story from an amazing woman

A story of compassion that is all too rare. Ruth's sacrifices and bravery in the face of ignorance and bigotry were amazing.

Life Changing!

Wow! Ruth Burks memoir is full of compassion and doing the right thing when fear, hatred and misinformation was it’s highest during the aids epidemic. Narrated by Ruth herself this audiobook is worthy of all the stars in the sky 🌟

I feel honored to hear Ruth’s story!

Listening to Ruth tell her story, the story of “All The Young Men” she helped, was like talking with a friend. Of course there is a lot of sadness, but she tells the story with so much heart, humor and love. She said that the book wouldn’t have come to be without her co-author, Kevin, so I commend the two of them for sharing so beautifully the lives of so many men who were gone too soon.