The Smoke that Mystifies

Billy came out years ago and has never doubted who he is, so the woman he collides with on a busy Vancouver street should mean nothing to him. Instead he cannot stop thinking about her. Anna, settled in a committed relationship, finds herself just as unsettled by Billy. Then a disaster in Latin America sends her to Guatemala with her NGO, and by the time she returns, Billy has taken a stint back at his old job as a travel writer, a choice that carries him to Zimbabwe and into questions he thought he had answered long ago.

Alyson Quinn writes about attraction that refuses to fit its labels, setting two private upheavals against political turmoil and human catastrophe. For readers who like their love stories searching and morally unsettled, and who enjoy a novel that leaves the question of who we are honestly open.