Patricia Nell Warren - novel - 1974 - p. 76    

Viewed as the first contemporary novel with major gay storyline to garner both critical and popular acclaim, The Front Runner is focalized through Harlan Brown, the athletic director at Prescott College and closeted gay man who married the woman he impregnated as an undergraduate himself. Told in flashbacks, the novel reveals that his marriage crumbled after he was forced out of his position at Penn State following specious allegations of sexual misconduct from a male student. At Prescott, he permits three promising runners who have been expelled from the University of Oregon track team for being gay to enroll, and he begins a relationship with one named Billy, whom he later weds. Their relationship ends in tragedy.

Key elements: homosexuality, marriage