Oof. I was living in Iowa City and then Minneapolis during that time, and I had no close friends who were out. Ok, so there was my dad, but that's a weird complicated thing. At any rate, my understanding of what was going on contemporaneously was from acquaintances and news reports. I've since made friends with people who lived through the crisis on a more personal and visceral level. From what I can tell, Makkai not only got the details right, she got the emotional heart of the thing right.