Glove Puppet

Book excerpt: Vaslav is a boy with a sordid past and tenuous future. Born Johnny to a drug-addicted prostitute, Johnny becomes Vaslav when, at age seven, his mother dies of a drug overdose and a passing stranger befriends him and brings him to Australia to pass as his own, recently deceased son. As Vaslav, he lives a comfortable life as the well-loved son of a prominent gay man, but when he becomes a teenager he realizes that "Johnny" still lurks inside him. With the seeds of his own destruction sown deep within, Vaslav initiates a forbidden love affair, one that threatens to destroy him and all that he loves.Glove Puppet is a brilliant novel where love and transgression, sex and manipulation, collapse upon each other, and where the best intentions yield the worst results.