Post Traumatic Dress Disorder - Launch of Long-Awaited Noir Drag Novel by F. S. Rosa!

Join Sin Soracco, author of Low Bite and Edge City, and Patrick Marks, publisher of Ithuriel’s Spear for a reading from the now completed final noirish novel that F.S. (Francesca) Rosa was working on before her untimely death in 2016.

It’s 1972 — and three Vietnam army veterans, two of them drag queens, and their boss at a social services agency are (reluctantly) employed to track down run-aways who have fled to San Francisco for shelter from their repressive hometowns. One Fresno escapee, on the verge of his majority, has lied about his age and landed a job at the fabulous Finocchio’s Club, where female impersonators ply their trade. A make-up case is stolen, the body count starts to mount, and love blossoms in this noirish tale of finding one’s place in the world.

"Why do I love this book? Perhaps because this sassy story unfolds in 1972, exactly when I arrived in San Francisco trying to figure out my gay identity. Its fascinating cast of characters, its fresh take on the fast-paced detective novel, and of course its all-important focus on fashion, set against San Francisco’s colorful seventies LGBTQIA (long before that acronym existed!) underworld make this a page-turner." — Jim Van Buskirk, co-author of Gay by the Bay: A History of Queer Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area

" Post Traumatic Dress Disorder got San Francisco right. I would know. I was there."
— Richard “Scott” Lyons, who performed at San Francisco’s legendary drag institution Finocchio’s under the name Beverly Plaza.

" I loved Francesca’s book, and not only her book, but the work of those who succeeded her in writing it!" — Kevin Killian, poet, editor, and author of Fascination and Impossible Princess