Named one of the Best Memoirs of the Year by Esquire Named one of the Best Books of the Year by Shelf Awareness Named a Southwest Book of the Year A striking literary memoir of genderfluidity, class, masculinity, and the American Southwest that captures the author's experience coming of age in a Tucson, Arizona, trailer park. Newly arrived in the Sonoran Desert, eleven-year-old Zo 's world is one of giant beetles, thundering javelinas, and gnarled paloverde trees. With the family's move to Cactus Country RV Park, Zo has been given a fresh start and a new, shorter haircut. Although Zo doesn't have the words to express it, he experiences life as a trans boy--and in Cactus Country, others begin to see him as a boy, too. Here, Zo spends hot days chasing shade and freight trains with an ever-rotating pack of sunburned desert kids, and nights fending off his own questions about the body underneath his baggy clothes. As Zo enters adolescence, he must reckon with the sexism, racism, substance
