No Safeguards, the first book in a trilogy, follows Jay's life from age six to twenty-six - and to a lesser extent that of his brother Paul. We witness the destructive impact of fundamentalist Christian beliefs on his mother and father, opposition to those beliefs by the boys' grandmother and each boy's very different response to their parents' religiosity. This is especially poignant after they leave their grandmother's comfortable home in St Vincent to join their mother in Montreal. The revelation that both boys are gay adds to their sense of oppression and divides them from their mother, whose views on the subject are shaped by the church and the theology of the Torah.