rtment. Cut to the bar. Cut to the back room. Ponyboy is strung out and struggling. He is falling into the widening chasm between who he is--trans, electrically so--and the blank canvas his girlfriend, Baby, wants him to be.

Cut to Berlin. Ponyboy sinks deeper into drugs and falls for Gabriel, all the while pursued by a photographer hungry for the next hot thing. As his relationships crumble, he overdoses.

Cut to open sky. In a rehab back home in Iowa, Ponyboy is his mother's son. In precise, atmospheric prose, Eliot Duncan's debut novel lays bare the innate splendor, joy, and ache of becoming one's self.