A queer, rollicking retelling of The Odyssey

Zane Viaggio’s life has been fraught since leaving New York City for Cleveland. Uprooted and missing his life in the city, he escapes into parties and pills. When he wakes up vomiting several days in a row, he’s convinced by his three drag queen roommates and his best trans-femme friend to get a pregnancy test, learning that not only is he pregnant, but pregnant in an Ohio that has just outlawed abortion. Zane must then embark on an epic journey around Lake Erie and its surrounding towns on a stolen jet ski to find the man who impregnated him, get the money to go back to New York City for an abortion, and get his life back to normal. In this queer and trans retelling of The Odyssey, Zane encounters all sorts of strange and challenging characters—including one-eyed cats, force-femmed prophets, and his own chosen family—who help him discover that, perhaps, finding home is the greatest journey of all.

ALEX DIFRANCESCO is the author of All City, Transmutation, Breaking the Curse, The Grief Shop, and The Living Copy. They are a 2022 winner of the Ohio Arts Council’s Individual Excellence Award, as well as the first transgender award finalist in over eighty years of the Ohioana Book Awards.