"A teenage runaway fights for survival on 'the boulevard of broken dreams' in this searing debut novel based on a true story. It's always sunny in California until you walk on the wrong side of Sunset Boulevard. And yet the bright lights still call to thousands, and every day new arrivals fill the ranks of Hollywood's underworld of teenaged runaways and hopeful stars turned hookers and strippers. Their stories are too wretched and too sad for society's attention, but when a high-profile lawyer is murdered at the Chateau Marmont, lackluster detective Jimmy McCann takes to the streets and finds himself enmeshed in a complex web of prostitution and drugs, learning that the killer, a young girl named Casey, is a victim in her own right. Plagued by the guilt surrounding his own son's descent into drug addiction, McCann delves into Casey's troubled community of homeless runaways, which is characterized by abuse, rape, death and disease, but also by friendship, loyalty and love." -- From dust jacket.