Rough Trade
A Novel
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3.4 • 8개의 평가
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- US$11.99
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Named a Best Crime Novel of 2024 by The New York Times Book Review
Alma Rosales is back and trouble is hot on her heels in this thrilling, queer historical novel from the critically acclaimed author of The Best Bad Things.
Washington Territory, 1888. With contacts on the docks and in the railroad and a buyer’s market funneling product their way, ex-detective Alma Rosales and her opium-smuggling crew are making a fortune. They spend their days moving crates and their nights at the Monte Carlo, the center of Tacoma’s queer scene, where skirts and trousers don’t signify and everyone’s free to suit themselves. And Alma, who is living as a hardscrabble stevedore called Jack Camp, knows this most of all.
When two local men end up dead, all signs point to the opium trade. A botched effort to disappear the bodies draws the attention of lawmen, and although Alma scrambles to keep them away from her operation, she’s distracted by the surprise appearance of Bess Spencer—an ex-Pinkerton agent and Alma’s first love—after years of silence. Then a handsome young stranger, Ben Velásquez, rolls into town and falls into an affair with one of Alma’s crewmen. When Ben starts asking questions about opium, Alma begins to suspect she has welcomed a spy into her inner circle, and she’s forced to consider how far she’ll go to protect her trade.
Katrina Carrasco plunges readers into the vivid, rough-and-tumble world of the late-1800s Pacific Northwest in this genre and gender-blurring novel. Rough Trade follows Carrasco’s critically acclaimed debut, The Best Bad Things, and reimagines queer communities, the turbulent early days of modern media and medicine, and the pleasures—and price—of satisfying desire.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Carrasco's outstanding sequel to The Best Bad Things delivers even more grit, queerness, and 19th-century swashbuckling than its predecessor. High society smuggler Delphine Beaumond has shifted her opium trade operations from Port Townsend to the emerging city of Tacoma, Wash., in 1888. Her accomplice and lover, Alma Rosales—who now lives mostly as her male alter ego, Jack Camp—runs the team that off-loads opium at the docks and prepares it for distribution via the Northern Pacific Railroad. Police put eyes on the port after two dead men sporting track marks wash up nearby, placing new pressure on Alma to keep the trade flowing and everyone out of jail. Then Bess Spencer, Alma's former Pinkerton colleague—and first love—shows up in Tacoma, throwing her into a tailspin. Meanwhile, Ben Collins, the new-in-town lover of one of Alma's male dock workers, offers to join the crew when an illness leaves them shorthanded, but Alma can't decide if he's on the level or spying for the cops. Each of the main characters walks a tightrope between caring for their friends and protecting their self-interest, and the booming port city's political drama provides a heated backdrop for the cat and mouse game between law enforcement and the smugglers. Carrasco presents Alma/Jack as more explicitly trans this time out, raising fascinating questions about the era's gender dynamics, which she fleshes out with vivid depictions of men's cruising bars and Ben's internal struggles about his sexuality. Readers who love to root for the rogues will gobble this up.
