Trash Sex Magic [Hardcover]

Jennifer Stevenson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2007

It’s a romance, it’s funny, it’s sexy, it’s about family and kinship, mothers and daughters, homecomings and never leaving home at all. It’s got villains and magic and even a tornado, along with characters who go through unexpected trans-formations (some quite literal). It’s a page-turner. Raedawn Somershoe lives in a trailer on the banks of the Fox River. She likes men and men like her. It runs in the family: her mother can seduce a man just by walking across a road. When they set their sights on a man, something magical happens. Alexander Caebeau drives a bucketloader for a construction company. He’s lonely, homesick, tired of cutting down trees and putting up ugly buildings. He’d like to go back to the Bahamas, but his grandmother won’t let him come home and when Alexander meets Raedawn Somershoe, something magical happens.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

There are some pretty weird things going on in the backwoods along the Fox River, just beyond Chicago's far-western suburbs. Twenty-four-year old Raedawn Somershoe and her mom Gelia are trailer trash, women of ill repute, who have worked their sexual wiles on many men in nearby Berne, Ill., not to mention any number of truckers and passing strangers. They live just outside of town with a variety of ill-sorted, half-feral family members and lovers and are mostly content with life. Then a corrupt developer decides that he wants their riverside property as the site for posh new townhouses and he won't take no for an answer. This turns out to be a mistake because the Somershoes have a powerful sexual magic, magic rooted deeply in the trees and the river, and the earth itself. Alexander Caebeau, a homesick Bahamian who runs heavy machinery for the construction company building the townhouses, quickly falls under Raedawn's spell. Then, after an enormous piece of construction machinery is found disassembled overnight, Caebeau is made night watchman and discovers that he has a marvelous and marvel-filled fate in store for him. Filled with oddly bent characters, lovingly detailed descriptions of the Illinois countryside, and just the right amount of magic, Stevenson's first novel is at once sexy, beautifully written and passing strange.
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From Booklist

They squat in colonies on the banks of a river around which surburbs sprawl: slutty women with unmatched outfits and out-of-fashion hair, whose wild, truant children of curiously invisible fathers are brought up to be equally slutty and unfashionable. Trailer trash. Their decrepit mobile homes stand between the river and a luxurious new housing development. But that's not all that stands between the developers and their dreamed-of riches. For Raedawn Somershoe and her mother, Gelia, aren't just trampy and looking for quickies from the construction workers (though they are that, too). They are as close as a modern suburb can come to real elemental powers-- women who make love with the trees and the earth, as well as pretty much any human males they encounter. Hardly what environmentalists mean when they say "tree-hugger," the Somershoes are powerful allies in the natural world's attempt to survive urbanization, and they use sex as their most potent tactic. Vivid, strange, pulsing with life, this is an unforgettable debut by a promising author. Patricia Monaghan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 292 pages
• Publisher: Small Beer Press; 1St Edition edition (April 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1931520062
• ISBN-13: 978-1931520065
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,712,566 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jennifer Stevenson lives in the Chicago area with her stagehand husband of thirty years. Her stories have been published in a number of anthologies. She also posts at www.bookviewcafe.com, on facebook as Jennifer Stevenson, and on Twitter as JenStevenson.

"Late in life I've gotten athletic. I'm a quad roller skater with the Fleetwood Speed Team. I ride horses. I swim every day. And I do a sickening number of extra exercises so I can stay good at all these things. Crazy, huh?

I'm also a crow nut. Feeding crows is totally unnecessary, so of course I love tossing them peanuts, or putting out my Thanksgiving turkey carcass so they can pluck the bones. Pound for pound, crows are smarter than we are. And they always look like they're having fun."

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A strange magical love story, August 21, 2004

By 

Marianne Frye (Nashua, N.H., USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Trash Sex Magic (Paperback)

This book was an amazing read. It is hard to believe that it is her first book !

It is a sensuous and lyrical tale told about an odd and unusual group of characters who live along a river bank. The characters are never made fun of or exploited for the story, and instead of victims of society they are people who have made unconventional choices. They are given depth and a vibrancy that makes you think they live on still after the book is done. Her writing is such that you seem to be in their world - it is both very human, and very different.

The story is a love affair between the characters and nature, with sex often being their means of communicating and channeling the magic and the love. It is an integral part of the story, but not graphic or leering.

The story is told beautifully and contains a bit of mystery, pathos, horror and hope. Though there is a plot, the true focus is the characters and their love of the land and each other. A truly wonderful accomplishment.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sublime fantasy, November 21, 2005

By 

Charles R. Middaugh (Lawrence, Kansas USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Trash Sex Magic (Paperback)

This is without doubt one of the most original books I have read. It is very beautifully written and certainly took me to a place I have never been. It continues to haunt me weeks after I completed it. I can't recommend it highly enough. It manages to synthesize elements of fanatsy, horror, reality and sensuality in a way that leaves you overwhelmed at the beauty of the world. And one thing is for certain-you will never, never look at a tree in the same way again!

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lyrical and beautifully written but what the hell was it about?, March 29, 2006

By 

Lisbeth Ann "TinlizzyF" (Milton Freewater Oregon) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Trash Sex Magic (Paperback)

I read this in one sitting and I kept wondering if there was a metaphor that I missed somewhere. But no, it is paranormal at it's strangest depth. It was as if the writing was magical, very beautiful and difficult to stop reading. The flow was musical and yet if I had to describe this book to someone in a word, I would have to say STRANGE. There is one character in this book that was so beautiful in human form and magical form and that is where I wondered whether I had missed a metaphor. Alexander Caebeau is a beautiful Bahamian man of such a gentle and giving nature, incredibly beautiful in every physical and spiritual sense, he is someone you think about out of the clear blue, many months after you've read the book, at a time perhaps when you secretly wish there was an Alexander Caebeau in your life. And maybe that is what the book is about. I can never be sure but the prose is so lyrically appealing and Alexander is uncommonly innocent and sublimely beautiful which made the book worth reading, even if it was the strangest book I've ever read.