Connecting is not easy, but proximity is unbearable. The characters in these brilliant and intense stories are longing for escape, but they inevitably find themselves homesick. Chih-Ying Lay, a Taiwanese-Canadian, probes a desperate need for beauty and belonging — and the cost when what is found is the opposite of both. Lay's characters are outsiders, whether queer, indigenous, unloved or lost, and each discovers that home is not the sanctuary it was meant to be. Sometimes, they find a place to call their very own, as if to tell the reader: You can too.
