The Photographer's Sweethearts

This daring novel -- based on the life of a man who lived in California in the first half of the century -- reveals an enigmatic man who, quietly and with a sense of certitude, tells his story: a story of children healed by his herbal medicine; of children photographed by him as they played nude; of children who were violated by him, often in the subtlest of ways; and of families who not only trusted but defended him when his actions were brought to light. This man is Louie Olsen: mystic, guru, lumberjack, holistic healer, photographer -- and lover of children. Only in the eternal giant Sequoias, in "fotographi" and in the innocence of children can Louie find the perfection and divinity his soul craves.Like a photographic negative where white is black and black is white, this powerful novel inverts received notions of morality to explore a territory beyond good and evil, a paradise lost where body and spirit are liberated from the shaded Eden of innocence into a world where the glare of knowledge both probes and enlightens. Like Nabokov's Lolita, Reage's The Story of O, Bataille's The Story of the Eye, and Sade's Justine, The Photographer's Sweethearts is at once a profoundly literary, profoundly sensual and profoundly moral experience.