A loopy teenager with a taste for masquerade, Bian "Bettie" Ahn Son is gulled by a pony-tailed ex-con with a tightly wound biological clock.
Race and revenge, easy credit and abortion, planetary peril and the gnawing hunger of memory... BEAUTIFUL MONSTERS is about Bian Son, busy fighting her way out of the leafy confines of Marin County. But the book is about more than a girl living through World War Whatever. It's also about her father, Tuan Son, a famous patrician soldier back home, but in American, he is penniless and powerless. He meets Phillip Percy, Jr., a blue-eyed construction foreman who offers him work. Unaware of the shameless ways and prison background of his new boss, Tuan introduces Phillip to his family. One thing leads to another and Bian finds herself pregnant.
Shamed and confused, Bian decides to take her life. She also calls her friend, Cassa Samson. Creative and courageous, Cassa will know what to do. Or so Bian believes. But Cassa’s father answers instead. A black slaughterhouse foreman filled with regret, Odus Samson seizes this last chance to get it right. But Bian's troubles only double. Phillip comes after the pair in a jealous rage, with Tuan, and Cassa, close behind. The storylines converge at a vanishing point where misspent dreams intersect with a new world being born.