Rough Trade

Washington Territory, 1888. With contacts on the docks and in the railroad, and with a buyers' market funneling product their way, Alma Rosales & her opium-smuggling crew are making a fortune. They spend their days moving product & their nights at the Monte Carlo, the center of Tacoma's queer scene, where skirts & trousers don't signify & everyone's free to suit themselves.

Then two local men end up dead, with all signs pointing to the opium trade, & a botched effort to disappear the bodies draws lawmen to town. Alma scrambles to keep them away from her operation but is distracted by the surprise appearance of Bess Spencer—an ex-Pinkerton's agent & Alma's first love—after years of silence. A handsome young stranger comes to town, too, & falls into an affair with one of Alma's crewmen. When he starts asking questions about opium, Alma begins to suspect she's welcomed a spy into her inner circle, & is forced to consider how far she'll go to protect her trade.

Katrina Carrasco plunges readers into the vivid, rough-and-tumble world of the late-1800s Pacific Northwest in this genre- and gender-blurring novel. Rough Trade follows Carrasco’s critically acclaimed debut The Best Bad Things & reimagines queer communities, the turbulent early days of modern media & medicine, & the pleasures—and price—of satisfying desire.