Confluence

An intimate, deeply moving queer coming-of-age novel that evokes '50s small-town life and the surprisingly wild pre-Stonewall '60s

In 1956, lonely fifteen-year-old Teddy is drawn to the water and woods surrounding his small town of Harrison Hot Springs on the west coast of Canada. He meets bad boy Wade and becomes overwhelmed by his attraction to him. During the rapturous early period of their friendship, the two range over the area's mountains and waterways before falling out after high school over Teddy's sexuality. In the years following their separation, Teddy struggles to live openly as a gay man, now going by Ted, finding and losing lovers at parties, dance clubs, and cruising spots in a surprisingly wild pre-Stonewall gay Vancouver. He is befriended by a lively crew of eccentrics—a new chosen family—who aid him in finding fulfillment both as a gay man and as an artist. Returning to his hometown nearly a decade later, Ted must decide whether or not to reunite with the one who once meant so much to him: the sexy and mercurial Wade.

Confluence is a collaboration between late author Alex Turner and his husband, Lucian Childs. Drawing on his sixty-year history with his beloved West Coast home, Turner wrote much of this beautifully rendered novel before he passed away in 2019. Childs, an award-winning author himself, completed the work, a novel that is simultaneously poetic, humorous, and exuberantly down to earth.