Down on the South Beach Drag

A poignant and irreverent coming-of-age tale of a queer young aspiring photographer in the ’70s torn between her love for her conservative family and her desire to be true to herself, perfect for fans of Daisy Jones and the Six.

It’s 1972, and eighteen-year-old tomboy Maeve O’Connor must win a photography contest to escape her suffocating, conservative family and attend her dream school in Manhattan. But where will she find arresting subjects? Why, a washed up old seaside resort called Asbury Park, New Jersey--a place where sideshow entertainers, strippers, carnies, artists, and alternative lifestyles coexist on the boardwalk in plain sight.

To her great surprise, Maeve manages to talk her parents into letting her go for the summer. Immediately upon reaching Asbury Park, she meets and falls in love with Georgie, a young man with superstar talent, held back by the fact that he is androgynous. She befriends other undiscovered artists as well, including a man who breaks through with a hit album. But what price will she pay for embracing the bohemian lifestyle where she feels she belongs?

Mary Kathleen Mehuron lives in a ski town in Vermont, where friends call her Kathy and she and her husband raised three sons. She has an almost weekly column in her local newspaper, The Valley Reporter, and is the author of three other novels: Fading Past, The Opposite of Never, and, most recently, The Belonger, which is set on Grand Turk Island and Providenciales. Mary Kathleen was born in Chicago and raised in New Jersey. She takes extended time to write on Grand Turk Island, Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, and Savannah--but for the last forty years she has called Waitsfield, Vermont, her home.