Trash, Sex, Magic

by Jennifer Stevenson

Overview

“This just absolutely rocks.”—Audrey Niffenegger

“Raunchy, funny, and disturbing.”—Chicago Reader

“Deeply charming.”—The Washington Post

A tender, joyful, raunchy, radiant novel. Imagine The Metamorphoses or A Midsummer Night’s Dream transported to the woods of Illinois. When a development company cuts down a beloved tree, and tries to drive out Raedawn Summer’s family, strange things start to happen.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781931520126
Publisher:	Small Beer Press
Publication date:	06/01/2004
Pages:	292
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

With her husband of twenty-six years, Jennifer Stevenson owns Hawkeye Scenic Studios, Inc., a scenery construction shop located in Chicago. Her stories have been published in a number of anthologies. "Solstice" was published as a chapbook by Green Man Review. Trash Sex Magic is Jennifer Stevenson's first novel. She is currently working on a series of romantic comedies.

Editorial Reviews

… [Stevenson's] portrayal of sexual magic and weird familial dysfunction in her ramshackle yet lovingly described milieu ("I guess you know this whole area's wetter than dog stool," Gelia warns at one point) is deeply charming, and its best scenes lodge in the reader's memory.
— The Washington Post

Gregory Feeley

There are some pretty weird things going on in the backwoods along the Fox River, just beyond Chicago's far-western suburbs. Twenty-four-year old Raedawn Somershoe and her mom Gelia are trailer trash, women of ill repute, who have worked their sexual wiles on many men in nearby Berne, Ill., not to mention any number of truckers and passing strangers. They live just outside of town with a variety of ill-sorted, half-feral family members and lovers and are mostly content with life. Then a corrupt developer decides that he wants their riverside property as the site for posh new townhouses and he won't take no for an answer. This turns out to be a mistake because the Somershoes have a powerful sexual magic, magic rooted deeply in the trees and the river, and the earth itself. Alexander Caebeau, a homesick Bahamian who runs heavy machinery for the construction company building the townhouses, quickly falls under Raedawn's spell. Then, after an enormous piece of construction machinery is found disassembled overnight, Caebeau is made night watchman and discovers that he has a marvelous and marvel-filled fate in store for him. Filled with oddly bent characters, lovingly detailed descriptions of the Illinois countryside, and just the right amount of magic, Stevenson's first novel is at once sexy, beautifully written and passing strange. (June 15) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly