Stephen Elliott's new novel, Happy Baby, explores how pain can define desire, how the future becomes the past, and how grace struggles with self-destruction. The story, told in reverse, begins with thirty-six-year-old Theo and his search for sexual and emotional freedom, and slowly unravels back to a childhood of abuse in the juvenile detention centers of Chicago. Without judgment, Elliott traces a life defined by yearning--for love, for pain, for certainty. His clear words and unflinching gaze reveal the difficulty of simple truths and the possibility of transcendence in the face of unforgivable crimes.
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