"When Harvard Medical School student Alexa Albert conducted a public-health study at the Mustang Ranch brothel in Nevada, the only state in America where prostitution is legal, neither she nor the women of the brothel could have predicted the result.

Having worked with homeless prostitutes at a drop-in center in New York City's Times Square, Albert was intimate with the human devastation caused by the sex trade and curious to see if Nevada's brothels offered a less harmful model for a business that will always be with us. Mustang Ranch had never before let such an outsider in, but after three years of Albert's persistent urging, it finally relented and opened its doors to her.".

"What Albert did not anticipate was that the women of the Mustang Ranch would be so hungry to confide in her, or that she would come to care about them so deeply. The prostitutes poured their stories out to Albert: how they came to be at Mustang Ranch, their surprisingly deep sense of craft and vocation, and how they reconciled their profession with the attitudes of their families and the outside world.

Consequently, what began as a public-health project evolved into something more personal and ambitious - a six-year study of the brothel and its women."--BOOK JACKET.