A “tour de force” novel from the groundbreaking author of City of Night and one of the premier chroniclers of gay life in America (Los Angeles Times).   John Rechy takes us inside a “leather and Western” bar located near the deserted waterfront of a large American city. This is a sexual battlefield—a world of trucks, piers, and warehouses—depicted in Rechy’s “eloquent, convincing, basically unsparing” prose (Herbert Gold).   The bar regulars are on a ceaseless search for compatible love. The occasional customer hopes for a quick sexual fix. Female and transvestite hookers work the dark streets outside. A couple seeks a voyeuristic experience. And one young man ventures out for the first time.   During the course of a single evening we get to know them all and watch as the night descends into the depths of a sexual underworld where danger and play transform into quasi-religious rites that end in ritual sacrifice.