In a mining town edging the Australian Nullarbor, Gina sits at the bar and devotes herself to the heart of what she’s trying to escape. After finishing a grueling cross-Canada tour, Dana, an alt-rock musician, flees to the Yukon to avoid her band’s rising fame and risks sabotaging it all. In a small West Coast fishing town, a boat-dwelling mother struggles to manage a friend’s cancer, mortality and a failing marriage. A novella, “Sung Spit,” chronicles Cassiopeia’s adolescence and young adulthood as she is paralyzed by an unwanted pregnancy and faces the disappearance of family members.

In her debut collection, Hideout Hotel, Janine Alyson Young delivers disparate characters struggling with their own inadequacies. From Coastal BC and Yukon Territory to Western Australia, each small town confines characters and mirrors their own limitations. From boats to abandoned shacks, tents to trailers, Young’s characters take refuge in unlikely places. As they meander from one edge of town to the other, they search for the overlooked morsel that will make them good. Somehow, in spite of themselves, they manage to survive.