The Front Runner
First edition front cover
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| Author | Patricia Nell Warren |
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| Cover artist | Bill Tinker |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Novel |
| Publisher | William Morrow & Company, Inc., New York (First edition) |
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Publication date
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1974 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 346 |
| ISBN | |
| Followed by | Harlan's Race (1994) |
The Front Runner is a 1974 novel by Patricia Nell Warren. A love story between a running coach and his star athlete, The Front Runner is noted for being the first contemporary gay novel to achieve mainstream commercial and critical success.
Harlan Brown is the athletic director at the fictitious Prescott College, a progressive, experiential, private liberal arts college in New York. A closeted ex-marine, Harlan has left a prestigious coaching position at Pennsylvania State University following false accusations of sexual misconduct from a male student. Fearing exposure, Harlan has buried himself at the obscure college, and given up his dream of coaching Olympic athletes.
As the novel opens in 1974, three star runners — Vince Matti, Jacques LaFont, and Billy Sive — have been expelled from the elite track program at the University of Oregon because they are gay, and wish to transfer to Prescott to train with Brown. Though wary after his experience at Penn State, Harlan agrees to train the athletes, but quickly finds himself falling in love with Billy. Though they manage to suppress their attraction for a few anguished months, the two soon become lovers. When the runners graduate and take teaching positions at Prescott, Billy and Harlan move in together, and later wed in a commitment ceremony.
Throughout the novel, Harlan’s past is revealed in the form of flashbacks. Though attracted only to men all of his life, Harlan marries a girl he impregnated while in college, living a wholly straight life with only occasional furtive, traumatic excursions into the gay underground of pre-Stonewall New York City. After the incident at Penn State, his marriage ends and he is unable to find employment as a coach, and ultimately begins work as a high-priced hustler in Greenwich Village. When Joe Prescott, the founder and president of Prescott College, offers Harlan a position as the college’s athletic director, he enthusiastically accepts. Returning to the closet, Harlan devotes himself entirely to coaching.
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