Blue River and Red Earth

With the density of compressed novels, these eleven stories inhabit their characters in settings from Russia and Romania to Paris, Central America, the Caribbean and southern Africa. In Stephen Henighan’s finest book to date, life choices strain against the pressure of history, and place acquires the force of myth.    Along the canals of St. Petersburg, a young Russian Muslim scientist grapples with the conflicting demands of her mind and her body.  Drawn together by a shared fascination with Romania, a group of friends are startled when one of them makes an incomprehensible marriage.  A fledgling poet in Paris is uncertain whether he is seeking art or love.   Two decades in a wayward Canadian’s relationship with a family-run hotel in Guatemala reveal irresistible emotional bonds as well as divisive truths about that country’s civil war.

The protagonists of the last five stories in the collection, an interracial Canadian couple, uncertain of their reception by others, confront love, death, and the differences that both pull them together and drive them apart.  These stories explore how we become part of the places we do not belong, and how long-distance emotional ties change us.