Stephen Elliott's new novel, Happy Baby, explores how pain can define desire, how the future becomes the past, and how grace struggles with self-destruction. The story, told in reverse, begins with thirty-six-year-old Theo and his search for sexual and emotional freedom, and slowly unravels back to a childhood of abuse in the juvenile detention centers of Chicago. Without judgment, Elliott traces a life defined by yearning-for love, for pain, for certainty. His clear words and unflinching gaze reveal the difficulty of simple truths and the possibility of transcendence in the face of unforgivable crimes." About the author: Stephen Elliott lives in San Francisco and lectures at Stanford University. He was born in Chicago, and was a Ward of the State of Illinois from age thirteen to eighteen. This is his fourth novel.