TRICKS and STONES

After well over a decade of sexual abuse and hiding behind her best friend’s elaborate plans for their futures, Elena Nash, a bi-racial teen, has run away to Chicago— her 16 year old world shattered not only by her mother’s suicide but by the tragic, untimely death of Lucy, her best friend. Regrettably, what she recognizes as a new beginning is, in fact, another dark tunnel of sexual abuse, secrets and sorrow. Taken in by Kitty, a Spanglish speaking has-been prostitute trying to hold on to her glory days at all costs, and an eclectic mix of madcap working woman, Ele misreads the reality of the words spoken by her late mother: you have to make your own changes in life, and transforms into Cookie, a high class call-girl, only to find that escaping her alcoholic stepfather and her small Central Kentucky town was by far the easiest part of her journey. And her new life, once idolized, is finally recognized for what it really is: something else Ele must survive.