The last place you’d expect to find a thoughtful discussion of teenage prostitution is a four-dollar Amazon gay romance.

Dark Angel is Corbin’s tale of trading sex for money. A key reason this novella deserves serious consideration is his family’s circumstances. His mom’s job doesn’t cover living expenses, a predicament tens of thousands of families face every week.

It isn’t a sociological study; it’s a dramatic story. Corbin shouts at his fourteen-year-old brother “Shut up!  Someone has to support this family…” “Don’t be naïve.  You think Mom can magically support us now that she found a crappy ass job that likely pays next to nothing? Don’t you understand, Charles?  Financially, we’re fucked.”

Mark Roeder has an ear for dialogue; whether it is a bunch of jocks ribbing each other or a teacher talking to a student, you immediately recognize that this is the way people talk to each other all over the United States. For years, followers of his work have recognized this as a strength of his writing. But Dark Angel turns a new page with its sympathetic portrayal of the pressures young Corbin faces in high school. Roeder, who often writes fantasy novels, becomes realistic without losing his charm.

Corbin’s predicament is powerful but also so common that it deserves serious consideration in discussions of legalizing sex work.

The family is already living on the edge when the father walks out. Corbin and his older brother kick in cash to help their desperate mom and keep the family together. It’s money earned from older guys paying for sex. It’s shady money. Both Corbin and his older brother, Marc, move easily into other scams that pay. Corbin believes there is little difference between prostitution, stealing, and drug dealing. Corbin is convinced they are equally bad, and he is scarred for life by his participation in the underworld. But the reader is unconvinced. His devotion to his mom and family leads him to use the money to pay for the electric bill and groceries.

How Corbin breaks out of this cycle forms the book’s dramatic tension.

His mom doesn’t get rich but does find a good man. The book never wavers from its depiction of low-wage work and the harsh effects it has on family life.

The father’s cruelty works its harshest effects on the oldest child, Marc, who had the strongest ties to his dad. A subplot depicts the horrid results.

Set in 1972, in small-town America, the book makes it clear that teenagers will find ways to meet men with money. Corbin is introduced to sex work by his older brother. Other characters in the book seek money for college or every day expenses. There is nothing in the predicament faced by these teenagers that can be solved easily. People looking for policies that will end these practices that have existed for centuries will find little encouragement. Teenage sex workers exist all over the world.

But Corbin is lucky and, of course, a teenage romance has a happy ending. Once his secret is discovered by his teacher, who is also his mom’s new boyfriend, Corbin goes into therapy.

There he learns that his brother and the Johns didn’t “make him gay.”  But advocates of legalization recognize that this confusion causes great pain and often leads to deep-seated hatred of gay men. Legalization ends the myth that behavior like sex work or gambling are soul-destroying activities. It enables people mixed up in these activities to see that they are good people.

Corbin escapes when a good man ends the family’s desperate struggle to make ends meet. Sex worker after sex worker have long insisted that they must have good jobs if they are to start new lives.

It’s a measure of the wisdom of Dark Angels that Mark Roeder recognizes this gut economic reality. The pleasure of reading this work comes from meeting the family, and one presumes there will be a sequel.