Meanwhile, in the manuscript’s margins, Voth suffers at the hands of the crumbling state university and its exploitative administration. Together, the two lovers hatch schemes that take them across plague-ridden London, dodging the police state and the sinister grasp of Jonathan Wild, “Thief-Catcher General,” who has it out for Jack. P- escapes indentured servitude and falls into the arms of Bess Khan, a prostitute of South Asian descent, who sees Jack as he longs to be seen. The manuscript appears to be a retelling of the Jack Sheppard legend, but it contains a marked difference: Jack was not born Jack, but P-, a young girl with a knack for making and fixing things. Voth, “a guy by design, not birth,” discovers a “mashed and mildewed pile of papers” at a university library book sale, he becomes obsessed with transcribing and documenting its contents. In this inventive debut, Rosenberg transforms the legend of Jack Sheppard, infamous 18th-century London thief, into an epic queer love story.
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