Backstrap

A Novel

Can you redeem your life in a corrupt world? That's the question for Callie Byrne, a street savvy Iraq vet recently out of drug rehab for heroin addiction, trying to reignite her life and regain custody of her son. Bartending in Philadelphia when a friend gets entangled with her ex-dealer, Callie must navigate the underground world of drug and sex trafficking between the jungles of Guatemala and a shady Manhattan leather import business. When she meets Ixchel, a young Mayan woman who wants to be smuggled to the US, there are no easy answers and no easy way out. Backstrap is a morally complex tale of the ordinary and harrowing decisions that define the lives of two young women connected across America's borders and struggling with their own guilty pasts, dreams of a new life, and the acts of sacrifice required of them.

©2016 Pearly Baker Press & Johnnie Dun (P)2017 Pearly Baker Press & Johnnie Dun