Ink Vine

By: Elizabeth Broadbent (Author), 2024, Hardcover

Sometimes, you just pick your poison and pray.

Bisexual stripper Emmy has lived her whole life in a small Southern town with a few rules: Listen to your mama; don't kiss girls; and stay the hell out of the swamp. Sick of all three, she sneaks under the dark tree-canopy behind her family trailer, where she meets Zara-mysterious, elusive, tattooed Zara, the first girl she dares to kiss.

But the small-town South hates a woman who dares to dance instead of plucking chickens for minimum wage, and as Emmy's life falls apart, her relationship with Zara grows more tangled and bizarre. Zara's offering something beautiful. But while Emmy's slowly strangling, its price may be more than she's willing to pay.

Shifting between the green-bright cypress cathedral and the dreamland of a dance club, Broadbent's unforgettably-voiced debut confronts the brutal realities of poverty in the South, with a sapphic tale both sultry and sinister, gritty and gothic.