“On the precipice, Harper bent her knees.
And then she jumped.
Without committing to a kiss, their lips brushed in the darkness.
The moment was suspended as they each cautiously waited for body cues to bring them together again. Grace’s lips, like the truffles, melted in Harper’s mouth when they finally kissed. And when their tongues met, they fell into each other completely. It was everything Harper knew she wanted, a softness, a sweetness she’d never known before.”
It’s not that Jukebox, Gina Daggett’s debut novel, tells a story that’s never been told before. It’s not that she brings new twists to the lesbian love song that we’ve never heard before.
But Daggett’s voice is new, her take her own, her characters courageous and fresh. Together, they elevate Jukebox beyond the usual formula and make it a story worth sharing.
“I was a former debutante, and my first girlfriend was also a fellow debutante and sorority sister,” Daggett tells me. “Although it’s fiction, some of the threads in the story were lifted from my own life. I grew up in Paradise Valley, Arizona. The novel started out as a memoir many years ago, but before that, it was therapy and the seeds were cultivated from diary entries after I penned my way out of the closet.”
Daggett, now a Vancouverite, is also the lipstick half of Lipstick & Dipstick, Curve magazine’s lesbian advice column. She’ll be launching Jukebox in Vancouver on Jan 25.
Why you can trust Xtra
