In Other Words

All the Beautiful Girls by Elizabeth J. Church

In 1957, when Lily Decker is nine years old, her parents and her sister die in an accident. She moves across town to live with her Aunt Tate and Uncle Miles, and her life goes as dark as a child’s can: Her aunt is a hardened woman with a suspicious nature, and her uncle is a gruesome sexual predator. Lily, who by her teen years is keenly aware of her good looks and sensuality but does not know that she is Einsteinlevel smart, sets her sights on a career as a dancer. Such is the premise of All the Beautiful

Girls, the second novel by New Mexico author Elizabeth J. Church (The Atomic Weight of

Love, Algonquin, 2016), who writes unflinchingly about the abuse Lily endures.

Later, as a showgirl in Las Vegas, Lily changes her name to Ruby and attempts to escape her past. But in this soapy, plot-driven novel, tragedy and betrayal follow her wherever she goes — or perhaps she attracts a certain type of drama, given the psychological ramifications of her many traumas. Nineteen-sixties Las Vegas is a glittering oasis of money, sex, and drugs, with showgirls who are expected to drink with men in the casinos after the show. Lily/Ruby makes enough money to keep herself outfitted in fur coats and fine jewelry, and gamblers thrust such gifts at her nightly. She is not a prostitute, so anything beyond flirtation is optional, which gives her a certain level of control over her circumstances. Eventually, she discovers a sexuality she’d previously assumed was lost because of the things her uncle did to her. Church writes in somewhat granular detail about these adult encounters, and any discomfort or titillation the reader feels in the juxtaposition of Lily/Ruby’s experiences is likely intentional.

Though the story takes place before many pop-psychology terms and ideas had entered the common vernacular,

Beautiful Girls’ narrative point of view tends to psychoanalyze the protagonist with a modern outlook on