In this queer, modern reimagining of Thelma & Louise, two best friends go on the run after stabbing a would-be rapist in a journey that grows darker and deadlier with each new disastrous decision they make.

TROUBLE GIRLS
by Julia Lynn Rubin
Wednesday Books/St. Martin’s Press, June 2021 (voir catalogue)

When Trixie picks up her best friend, Lux, for their first solo weekend getaway, she’s just looking to escape for a little while, to forget the despair of being trapped in her dead-end rustbelt town and the daunting responsibility of caring for her ailing mother. But a single moment of violence will forever change the course of the girls’ lives as they become wanted fugitives. Trying to stay ahead of the cops and a hellscape of media attention, the girls encounter an unforgiving landscape, rapidly diminishing supplies, and bad choices at every turn. As they are transformed by the media into the face of a #metoo movement they didn’t ask to lead and the road before them runs out, Trixie and Lux realize that they can only rely on each other and that the love they find together is the one thing that truly makes them free.

Julia Lynn Rubin earned her MFA in Writing for Children & Young Adults from The New School in 2017. For three years she served as a writing mentor for Girls Write Now, New York City’s premiere writing program for high school girls. Her fiction has appeared in publications such as the North American Review, The Lascaux Review and RipRap Literary Journal, among others. She is also the author of the young adult novel Burro Hills (Diversion Books, 2018), a queer contemporary with shades of The Outsiders, which was listed as one of the 2018 Best LGBT YA titles by B&N’s Teen Blog and was featured along with Mark Oshiro in the 2018 Brooklyn Book Festival. Julia currently lives in Brooklyn where she is working on her next writing projects.