Rough Trade - by Katrina Carrasco (Hardcover)

About the Book

"In this propulsive follow-up to The Best Bad Things, Alma Rosales (and her alter ego, Jack Camp) is back as a stevedore and part-time opium smuggler"--

Book Synopsis

Named a Best Crime Novel of 2024 by The New York Times Book Review

Alma Rosales is back and trouble is hot on her heels in this thrilling, queer historical novel from the critically acclaimed author of The Best Bad Things.

Washington Territory, 1888. With contacts on the docks and in the railroad and a buyer's market funneling product their way, ex-detective Alma Rosales and her opium-smuggling crew are making a fortune. They spend their days moving crates and their nights at the Monte Carlo, the center of Tacoma's queer scene, where skirts and trousers don't signify and everyone's free to suit themselves. And Alma, who is living as a hardscrabble stevedore called Jack Camp, knows this most of all.

When two local men end up dead, all signs point to the opium trade. A botched effort to disappear the bodies draws the attention of lawmen, and although Alma scrambles to keep them away from her operation, she's distracted by the surprise appearance of Bess Spencer--an ex-Pinkerton agent and Alma's first love--after years of silence. Then a handsome young stranger, Ben Velásquez, rolls into town and falls into an affair with one of Alma's crewmen. When Ben starts asking questions about opium, Alma begins to suspect she has welcomed a spy into her inner circle, and she's forced to consider how far she'll go to protect her trade.

Katrina Carrasco plunges readers into the vivid, rough-and-tumble world of the late-1800s Pacific Northwest in this genre and gender-blurring novel. Rough Trade follows Carrasco's critically acclaimed debut, The Best Bad Things, and reimagines queer communities, the turbulent early days of modern media and medicine, and the pleasures--and price--of satisfying desire.

Review Quotes

""The mystery smolders; desire and queerness suffuse the pages."
--Sarah Weinman, The New York Times Book Review

"Carrasco's characters display emotional depth and intelligence amid escalating danger in a lawless atmosphere... This is a fast-paced and racy thriller that intriguingly explores gender roles and sexuality repressed and (covertly) expressed during its late-1800s setting."
--Joelle Egan, Booklist

"An addictive treat sure to please fans of Sarah Waters and HBO's Our Flag Means Death... Detailed historical research bolsters dynamic crime fiction in this spectacular queer adventure about opium smugglers in 19th-century Washington Territory.
--Shelf Awareness

""Rough Trade is at times a brilliantly twisty thriller, a tightly-examined glimpse into life on the early edge of American mythmaking, and a roustabout adventure that centers the people who kept the economy going both above and below the board and the table at the turn of the twentieth century."
-- The Lesbrary

"[O]utstanding... Readers who love to root for the rogues will gobble this up."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Katrina Carrasco's Rough Trade is the kind of high-octane queer adventure that the historical record can point us to in scraps of diaries and newspaper accounts of 'female bandits, ' but rarely do we get to luxuriate inside the lives of these bad-ass queer ancestors in such glorious fiction."
--HUGH RYAN, author of When Brooklyn Was Queer

"Rough Trade is a thrilling, fascinating game of shifting alliances and betrayals. The blazing heart of the novel is queer joy--queer spaces of the past brought to life in roaring, Technicolor glory, an unforgettable found family of rebels and outlaws, and timeless questions about the radical choices and sacrifices necessary to live an authentic life. I loved this book."
--KIM FU, author of Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century

"Cunning and wildly compelling, Rough Trade is as lush as the smell of good tobacco, and just as dangerously addictive."
--LEV AC ROSEN, author of The Bell in the Fog

"In Rough Trade, Katrina Carrasco gives us the queer body as a source of joy. It's a delight to read of unexpected freedoms in our queer past."
--NICOLA GRIFFITH, author of Menewood

"Rough Trade is beautifully immersive. Stevedores, silk-clad ladies, and newspapermen grasp for power, and for each other, as this sharply drawn novel builds to a gripping conclusion that's just as tense and clever as Alma. I loved it."
--KATHARINE BEUTNER, author of Killingly

"Clever and twisty, stark and swift. If the gender-fluid, leads-with-their-jaw antihero doesn't get you and how can they not?--then the blood-thumping plot will."
--KAWAI STRONG WASHBURN, author of Sharks in the Time of Saviors

"Deliciously illicit, whiskey-soaked, and awash in impossible choices, Rough Trade grabs the reader with all the strength of its crate-hauling stevedores. Katrina Carrasco excels at creating characters we both love and hate as they drink, fight, and screw their way through Tacoma's criminal (and queer) underworld. You won't be able to put down this powder keg of a book until you find out just how it all goes down--or blows sky high."
--CARRIE CALLAGHAN, author of A Light of Her Own and Salt the Snow

About the Author

Katrina Carrasco is the author of The Best Bad Things, which won a Shamus Award and was a finalist in the Washington State Book Awards and Lambda Literary Awards. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in outlets such as Witness, Post Road Magazine, and Literary Hub. She is a Yaddo fellow and has received support from Jentel Arts, Blue Mountain Center, and other residencies and foundations. Carrasco lives in Seattle, Washington.