Happy Baby

On a flight from Oakland to Chicago, Theo thinks about two women he left behind: Maria, the girlfriend who shared his troubled youth, and Ambellina, the woman who has been satisfying the masochistic desires that emerged from it. His return to Chicago, and Maria, spurs the backward movement of this innovative novel that chases him ever deeper into the darkness and violence of his past.

In this beautiful and brutal novel, Stephen Elliott writes with raw honesty and a taut prose style that cuts through the fog of memory to get at the core of youth, pain, and what it means to be an outsider.