Little F

By turns heartbreaking, hilarious, and hope-filled, the latest from Tea (Valencia) follows a 13-year-old runaway’s search for a queer paradise. In his hometown of Phoenix, Ariz., Spencer dreams of a “mythically accepting place like Provincetown, Massachusetts,” believing that there, he would be accepted as gay. After he’s beaten so badly by a classmate that he’s sent to the hospital, he decides to make his dream a reality. Armed with cash from his only friend, Joy, along with a tall tale about an uncle in Provincetown, Spencer hitches a ride with two “hippie boys” he met at a party. The pair then steal his money and ditch him outside Austin, Tex. He walks into town, where a man tries to hustle him at the bus station and he’s saved by Velvet, an older handsome queer boy, and they travel together to New Orleans. The promise of Provincetown still looms in Spencer’s mind, but Velvet’s company in New Orleans helps him to discover he’s not alone. Each episode in the colorful and gritty narrative captures the reader’s attention, but the main attraction is Spencer’s barbed voice: “I was born to solid, stable, functional, miserable straight people.” This coming-of-age story soars. (Oct.)