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The Queen of Steeplechase Park is the absolutely, positively, practically, almost-true story of infamous burlesque queen and magic meatball maker Belladonna Marie Donato. Pregnant at fifteen after gleefully losing her virginity to pansexual neighborhood strongman Francis Anthony Mozzarelli, Bella is robbed of her baby by a pack of nefarious nuns and her embittered papa has her sterilized without her consent (legal in 1935) .

With the help of a besotted Francis, her newfound family of queercentric outcasts, and a top-secret meatball recipe, a devastated Bella embarks on a riotous quest through Depression-era Coney Island sideshows, the tawdry world of peekaboo striptease routines, a doomed mob marriage, and a tasty collection of wisdom-filled recipes to find her lost child, herself, and maybe even true love.