Lennie & Vance & Benji (1998)

I.I. Magdalen's third novel is loosely based on a true case of homosexual rape in a small Arkansas town. Lennie and Vance, drifters and grifters, hairdressers by avocation, lovers perhaps, employ the thirteen-year-old Benji to help out in their Salon, "Hair Today (Gone Tomorrow), and slowly, systematically and fatally seduce him. Henning Forsell, who visits Sapphire, Texas, two years after the events, unravels their three life and death stories against the background of small-town America. Magdalen's characters--Benji's feckless, ex-hippy mother, Mary Kay, her current lover, the disturbed Viet Nam veteran, Craig, the fat pedophile biker who calls himself "Captain" Ron, the "bouffant in hair and spirit" Ms. Pat Baldwin, the Nava County Prosecutor--will be impressed indelibly in readers' memories. Critics have said that Magdalen writes "like an angel." In this case, like an avenging angel. Not for the squeamish, the book touches on some deep and troubling issues: the nature of childhood sexuality, adolescent "innocence," violence and voyeurism. Brief, provocative, troubling.Magdalen, I. I. is the author of 'Lennie & Vance & Benji (1998)' with ISBN 9781902881461 and ISBN 190288146X.