Laura Albert

Cherry Vanilla, twelve years old with a penchant for short leather skirts and make-up, has one ambition: to become the most famous 'lot lizard', or truck stop whore, in the business. With his blonde curls and naked ambition he is determined to be more woman than most and to match his idol, rival and mother, Sarah - also working the lot. Cherry is recruited by Glad - the most sophisticated pimp there is. Glad dresses his boys in the finest silk from China, feeds them gourmet food and teaches them to tell what a trucker wants by the look in his eye. It is only when Sarah leaves Glad's protection that he discovers just how perilous his chosen profession can be.

A series of loosely connected autobiographical stories, they describe the disturbing relationship between a mother and her adolescent son as she moves from lover to lover, dressing him as a girl and forcing him to shoplift. These are shocking stories of abusive love and dysfunctional sexuality, of heartbreak and of innocence lost. Once again, LeRoy's fantastical imagination and lyricism twists his haunted past into something utterly strange and magical.