Birth of Eros | Debra Di Blasi

175 pages | Kernpunkt Press | 11.1.22

Los Angeles 1951-1953 A vicious rape, revenge gone awry, and American consumerism collide in the Atomic Age.

Lucy is born gifted and burdened with an "unsightly" right eye that sees far beyond the visible spectrum, lending her an uncanny view of events, things and people, including the dead. Her father is famous as an obscenely well-endowed men's underwear model; her mother is famous as sa sexy teenager modeling luxury automobiles—until wicked L.A. car dealer Mr. Wolf cons her into posing for increasingly explicit pinups. IN language both lyrical and transgressive, Lucy recounts the story of her "not smart" parents and Big Bad Wolf who becomes the catalyst for her conception and eventual calamity.

Evoking the lean, compressed style of her award-winning book Drought, writer Debra Di Blasi crafts an unrepentant tragicomedy navigating the complexities of hate vs. love, beauty vs. "ugliness," sexual freedom vs. moral hypocrisy, and American materialism.