Big Pink Meat – Terence Diamond

Set on a fabulist’s map of America, Big Pink Meat is a comic dystopian tale of a teen transboy who gets his start in life working the graveyard shift in a Danish ham factory. Stone, the eponymous “pink meat” is determined to get to college at all costs in order to escape his abusive alcoholic mother. When his plans are thwarted, the comedy turns black. The lad takes off into the woods in flight from local law enforcement where he suffers an unexpected transcendence all the while attempting to reach the freedom of a mythical island on the horizon. Roaming heedlessly along seaside and into deep forests on a tortuously circuitous route full of setbacks and regressions he finally reaches the island which proves to be a broken down city-state teeming with the diversions of drugs, alcohol, and women. With hard-won street smarts Stone embarks on a new life dedicated to artistic expression.