Jaq Direct: The Subversive Lovelies, Book Four, Volume Two

A final vicety. A moral bankruptcy. A story to end all stories.Jaq Bailey is the eldest, and the patriarch of, yes, those Baileys—of Barnum & … notoriety. He’s also a superlatively private individual, but as everyone knows, Bailey Enterprise viceties all have two aspects, and one of them is indubitably public-facing. The other is its real agenda.Although the original plan, now made more than ten years ago, was to open a brothel, Jaq has glimpsed a horizon far beyond that notion. A wide open plateau of forced sexual ignorance in American women gapes at the center of the promulgated image of the good woman that Jaq has become determined to illuminate so as to eliminate. For good.Innocence is over-rated.What inevitably enters the picture? Nemesis. In the person of self-elected morality postal inspector Anthony Comstock. If Jaq is to tell the truth about women, their glorious divinely-created bodies, and their capacity for pleasure, he must not only face down the superciliously sanctimonious smut-chaser, but he must do so proud—and out loud—in the Court of Public Opinion.As Jaq begins to walk the hazardous path of sexual truth-telling, his new publishing house, J. F. Bailey, Publishers tests the waters. The ladies of Hidden Gems clamor to help him. His three younger sisters, happily running their own viceties, stand in utter solidarity with their beloved elder brother as he learns of and razes the seven veils of obfuscation that stand between women and their own agency, when it comes to sex—and everything else.Taking on shame is no easy task, but that seems to be what’s in front of every objection to women holding their own power in this world.Will Jaq stand firm? Will he call out the genders, the institutions, the assumptions that undergird the illusory need for women to be ‘protected?’ Will he poke the bear … until at long last the public learns to accept the power inherent in womankind? Or, will the inertia of social custom defeat the impulse to innovation that is so desperately needed for the world to be a better place for everyone to thrive in … Read more