In this debut collection, Gayla Reid draws on the doubleness and dislocation that expatriates carry in their hearts. The people in these stories grow up Catholic in 1950s Australia, a world of immense natural beauty, and come to adulthood in the turbulent decade of the Vietnam War. Moving fluidly between past and present, between Australia, Southeast Asia and Canada, Reid follows her characters as they go to war or fight against it, work to create a society they can believe in, and explore the possibilities of friendship and love. For many of them, middle age bring with it a recognition of the power of memory and the claims of the past. The lives depicted here are full of contradictions, shot through with hope, disappointment and betrayals large and small. In spare, lucid prose, Gayla Reid portrays them all with intense feeling and a remarkably strong sense of place and time.

Gayla Reid's stories have won the 1994 CBC Radio/Saturday Night Literary Competition, the 1993 Journey Prize and a National Magazine Award. This collection provides and opportunity to see why her work has attracted Canada's most significant awards for short fiction.

This is a new release of the book published in September 1995.