"I think probably because of my age - and because I was the youngest - I think it's safe to say I took it the hardest," said Ruggiano.īut where did Eric Myers go, and how could he leave his wife and children behind?Įric says he was robbed on the last day of his San Diego business trip, then spent the night in a seedy motel with only a few hundred dollars in his pocket. Ruggiano and her sister were 8 and 10 at the time of their father's disappearance. "I remember screaming that I wanted him back," said Kirsten Myers Ruggiano. She said she cried herself to sleep every night for weeks. But nobody knows where he is, nobody knows where he went." "They find out that he checked out of his hotel on the first day of the conference, but continued going. "A healthy, successful American man with a wife and five kids just fell off the face of the earth," said Anglen. There were some hints of foul play as authorities searched for Myers, but they all became dead ends. But of course that's not what happened," said Anglen. "By all accounts it was a reset, it was a, you know, take a deep breath, let's assess what's going on, get away from the situation and maybe come back and see what happens. There was talk of divorce, and on June 25, 1991, as Eric headed to a real estate seminar in San Diego, little did his family know he wouldn't be coming back. But yet he was doing the Christian thing by staying married," said Vandervoort. "Eric searched high and low through the Bible and could not find a way out. didn't fit Eric's mold of a Christian housewife," said Anglen. "Anne tells the story of, she wanted to go to college, she wanted to finish the degree, and that. And he was borrowing money from his dad's company to pay it back," said Vandervoort.Īnd despite picture-perfect appearances, Eric's marriage was on the rocks. While Eric's career, as a property manager in his father's booming real estate business, was taking off, he confided to his friend David Vandervoort that he was in over his head. The family was deeply religious and soon grew to include three adopted boys from Vietnam. "I remember him being fun," said Kirsten Myers Ruggiano. What appeared to be a storybook marriage was completed by two daughters, Erin and Kirsten. "When I'm in Washington state, away at school, I realized that the only thing I miss back in Arizona is Anne," said Myers. While in college Myers couldn't shake his memories of a sweet girl he knew named Anne. In high school, Myers was a popular class president who was also considered a class clown. The conservative, wealthy Myers family lived among luxury homes, picturesque golf courses and influential neighbors. "He had every advantage: the best schools, the best neighborhoods, the best toys," said Anglen. Privileged BeginningsĮric Myers was the third of five kids born to Don and Joan Myers in a suburb just outside of Phoenix. I wanted everything to end," said Myers in an interview with ABC News. Our books should reflect that multiplicity.Why would a wealthy, successful real estate agent living the American dream just throw everything away? These works (which include books that are already on the shelves and others you can look forward to reading later in the year), reveal that as much as we share certain things in common, our narratives-our selves-are various. There's poetry, history, true crime, time travel, and a slew of dynamite short story collections. McQuiston's new novel, One Last Stop, is 1 of 45 on this list of the best LGBTQ books of 2021, illuminating the vast and multi-hued world of the queer experience. We read queer books in large part because there is deep profundity in finding out we're not alone, and yet there is a singularity to our stories, to the stories of others.
It is a wholly subjective experience, something that lives inside all of us, which is why LGBTQ literature is so dynamic and vast. It means different things to different people. Queerness isn't a solid state, an easy description for sexuality or identity. It unfolds like a first language every time I open my mouth." It is inside all of my thought processes, it moves my hips when I walk, it makes me pick at my cuticles. "My queerness is a living animal," Casey McQuiston wrote in an essay for Oprah Daily's Coming Out series, "the same way that I am.