The Doll doesn't age.  She's twenty four, stuck in the body of an eight-year-old, highly sexual, desired only by pedophiles.  She works in the circus, doing tricks with knives.  She's as hard as nails.  Juniper is a poet.  She works in the circus too because she's covered in fur.  She undresses on stage and ties herself up while reciting her poems.  Slim is the horse handler, sweet with his horses, vicious with his lovers.  He and Juniper have a child, a boy named Cherry.

Juniper should never have been a mother.  She spends Cherry's childhood in and out of mental institutions, leaving Cherry with his abusive father.  The Doll does what she can to protect him, but then, Juniper and Cherry disappear.  The Doll doesn't see him for years, until she finds him, one day, in a town she's passing through.  He works at a bakery where he is famous for his elaborate fondant cakes. 

One day, Cherry falls in love with a mermaid he finds swimming in a tank at a bar that's nowhere near the sea. . .

The first draft of The Fondant Forest was written with the help of a grant from the Toronto Arts Council. It is still a work in progress.