Between dances

Set in a male-burlesque theater, this debut novel captures a bygone era of a seedy Times Square, following the mercenary life of a young dancer who falls in love for the first time. With the same grim beauty as John Rechy's "City of Night" and Jean Genet's "The Thief's Journal," this novel traces the arabesques of acrid smoke and loneliness wound around the dim world of hustlers and johns, of porn theaters and crumbling hotel rooms. "Between Dances," an early work by Erasmo Guerra, received a Lambda Literary Award in 2000 and is being reissued in a second edition.