<DIV><p>'<I>Maidenhead</I> is a mesmerizing and important novel, lying somewhere between the wilds of Judy Blume, <I>Girls Gone Wild</I>, and Michel Foucault. It's a thrilling, brilliant, and really hot place to be.' ? Sheila Heti, <I>Globe and Mail</I></p><P>On a mangy beach in Key West, sixteen-year-old Myra meets Elijah, a Tanzanian musician twice her age. Trapped on a Spring Break family vacation, Myra longs to lose her virginity to Elijah, and is shocked to learn he lives with Gayl, a secretive, violent woman with a strange power over him.</P><P>When Myra and her splitting-up family return home, she falls in with a pot-smoking anarchist crowd. But when Gayl and Elijah follow her north, she walks willingly into their world, engaging in more and more abject sexual games.</P><P>As Myra enters unfamiliar worlds of sex, porn, race and class, she explores territories unknown in herself. <I>Maidenhead</I> traverses the desperate, wild spaces of a teenage girl’s self-consciousness.</P><BR></DIV>