Possanza first came across Casal in a book about the 1969 Stonewall uprising, which mentioned in a “very offhand remark” that Casal’s memoir, “The Stone Wall,” was the namesake of the bar where the modern-day gay rights movement was born.

The book’s first romance - between Mary Casal, a writer and entrepreneur from New England, and the woman she fell instantly in love with on a business trip to New York in 1892 - is its defining one. They are a turn-of-the-century memoirist and her muse, a Harlem Renaissance-era performer and her “wifey,” a midcentury golf legend and her protégé, the poetess of Lesbos and the woman who broke her heart, a Coney Island male impersonator and her stripper paramour, a duo of revolutionary ‘70s thinkers and a writer who cared for her friend as he died from AIDS. In the end, she unearthed seven notable figures, who are each at the center of a chapter in “Lesbian Love Story.” In mostly chronological order - interrupted by the Greek poet Sappho, in the middle - their stories and those of the women who loved them unfold. Possanza said certain criteria ruled out some of the usual suspects, like Eleanor Roosevelt and Emily Dickinson, who never confirmed their much-speculated-upon queerness with words like “lesbian” and “sapphic.” So she had to scour accounts of cultural revolutions, wars and social movements for mentions of lesser-known lesbians, even if only as footnotes. It took years of research and combing through many different archives for her to find her subjects. She tells these stories through a combination of nonfiction prose, selections from firsthand accounts and fan-fiction-like recreations of intimate moments. And what she ended up finding, with a lot of digging, were inspiring everyday people whose lives were shaped by love stories. In this case, Possanza went looking in historical works for self-described lesbians who could serve as role models for her own sapphic journey. “ Lesbian Love Story” started as a kind of self-discovery mission for Possanza, a writer and book publishing professional, who said she has turned to books for answers throughout her life.

Early moments books