The book is about Leslie Elaine Perez (1938-2005), born Leslie Douglas Ashley. She was a convicted murderer who took part in the murder of Fred Tones, a Houston-based real estate broker. She did it with Carolyn Lima. They were both working as prostitutes at the time of the murder. She was convicted and sentenced to death but her sentence was reduced to 15 years, and in the end, she served five.
After five years of chopping cotton in Texas prison farms, she was released, and soon after she underwent a gender reassignment surgery. At the beginning of the 1970s, she became a leader in the gay community of Houston and got involved in US politics, which lead to her being elected to local office in Texas.
