Junkette

Junkette is the story of Claire Cunningham, a woman navigating disasters— natural and of her own making. Claire is a bartender in pre-Katrina New Orleans, a college graduate whose heroin addiction parallels the swirling fortunes of her sinking city. She knows she needs to get clean, but despite being smart enough to see all the angles, she can’t quite find a way out.

“In Junkette, every bag of dope is a bag of sunshine, until it turns into a hurricane.. Everybody is a potential lover until the love is gone. Junkette is the kind of book that makes you happy to be sad because Shotland is beatific but not a beatnik, and she knows that living is a tragedy and love is hard-earned. I haven’t read a book this wonderful since Barry Hannah dropped Ray on us all those years ago. Shotland hit my heart in the exact same way, with the exact same breath of awe.” – Lori Jakiela, author of The Bridge to Take When Things Get Serious

“New Orleans —mermaid city—is a drug for the protagonist of Junkette. Claire tends bar, hangs out with dealers, and is willing to die a little each day, all so she can stay inside the petal-dream of her adopted city. In the end she doesn’t know where the city’s moist air ends and her own skin begins. Junkette is a provocative, literate and magnolia-skinned first novel.” – Maureen Gibbon, author of Swimming Sweet Arrow and Thief