LITERARY LAS VEGAS

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"At the end of the day, the Las Vegas in this novel is not the actual city, but a version of Las Vegas, one created in my imagination," author Charles Bock writes of his debut novel, "Beautiful Children." Bock's imaginary Vegas was fueled by his experience, growing up and working in his parents' downtown Las Vegas pawn shop. Over the shop's counter, Bock watched as broken-down people pawned their treasures to make ends meet.

"Usually, though, it was the weekend warriors on the other end of a sleepless binge. Men who'd emptied their wallets, cashed in their plane tickets, and were in need of enough money to get back to the tables," Bock writes.

While pawn shops make appearances, they aren't the sole subject of the book. Bock packs his work with runaway teens, the parents they leave behind, and a cast of gritty cameo characters: the comic book artist ready for a weekend of sin; the stripper who can only get through the day imagining her life as a series of movie scenes; the music-loving vampire wannabe.

While working on his MFA at Bennington College in Vermont, Bock started "Beautiful Children" first as a short story, then as a novella that kept evolving over the course of 10 years. He'll be presenting the book in a free, public reading 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Clark County Library, 1401 E. Flamingo Road.

Excerpt from "Beautiful Children"

Downtown was upon them, hotels and towers packed into that dense square district, tour buses parked like gigantic, end-to-end dominos along the right side of the street. A bombastic patriotic jingle blared through the overhead speakers, emanating from the open-air mall of Fremont Street, where the animation loop was running -- red and white stars flowing down a sky-blue backdrop, cartoon fighter jets traversing the length of the street. Not too many people were beneath the dome to watch -- a lone woman, elderly and stooped, had put down her overstuffed shopping bags and was looking up; a pair of undefined gambling fiends were making their way around a shut-down souvenir cart. A few other miscreants were out there, too, swerving and staggering, the drunken dregs, the losers and the lost and those who knew they would keep on losing, yet were powerless to stop themselves. Newell was watching it all without betraying emotion, at least he was putting up a good front -- Kenny knew him well enough to recognize that's what it was: the boy tightly constricted, visibly failing in his efforts to keep his fears at bay. He was so obviously susceptible, so tangibly vulnerable. Kenny was overcome with how young Newell actually was.