A crystal diary

Frankie Hucklenbroich's razor-edged, compelling, often wryly humorous story hustles us from the blood-and-beer-drenched corners of her St. Louis meat-packing district '5Os youth, through the sex-soaked Hollywood alleys of her '6Os baby butch years, into the druggy metropolis of '70s San Francisco.

Moving relentlessly from one woman to another until faces and bodies blur, scamming her existence, learning what the street has to teach: how to make a buck, how to make it with a woman, how to court the dangers of crystal meth, how to survive.