2026 Illumination Book Awards—Gold Medal

2026 International Book Awards—Finalist

2026 Readers' Favorite International Book Awards—Finalist

How much of yourself are you willing to sacrifice to be loved?

Raised in poverty in the backwoods of South Alabama, John grew up amid violence, instability, and fear. Home was never safe. Love was never secure.

When a small Pentecostal church offered safety, purpose, and belonging, he embraced it completely.

But belonging came at a price.

To remain part of that world, he had to hide the truth about himself—a truth he was taught would send him straight to Hell.

So he abandoned himself and became the person everyone needed him to be.

A husband.

A father.

A pastor.

For years, he believed that obedience, sacrifice, and faithfulness would finally earn him a place to belong.

Then his brother Terry's death shattered the certainty holding that life together. Questions John had spent years silencing became impossible to ignore. When he could no longer hide from the truth, the life he had spent decades building collapsed, forcing him from the only world he had ever known.

Now a clinical psychologist, Wilson brings both lived experience and psychological insight to a story of faith and sexuality, family and exile, shame and forgiveness—and the complicated ways we learn to disappear in order to keep the people we love.

Straight to Hell is an award-winning memoir about the price of belonging, the courage of telling the truth, and the possibility of finding home after exile.

"The freedom I chased was never in leaving where I came from. It was in no longer leaving myself." -John Wesley Wilson