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REVIEWS
The British Columbia Review | Valley living, city life
“Seamlessly produced in a singular voice, Confluence is an original work of contemporary fiction that freshens up the B.C. shelf of the queer lit canon. Hauntingly beautiful, this novel lingers long after you finish reading it…”—Daniel Gawthrop
Xtra | Confluence brings Vancouver’s queer history to life
“…a unique and rewarding ode to mid-century gay British Columbia…. [A] rewarding read for anyone curious about what it was like to find one’s way in the world as a young white gay man in [the] 1950s and 1960s…”—H Felix Chau Bradley
Maisonneuve | The Summer 2026 Book Room
“The story is tender, electric and at times heartbreaking…. Confluence is a moving labour of love between two people, across life and death…”—Claire Donnan
Expendable Mudge Muses Aloud | CONFLUENCE, our queer elders show us how they did it in times more dangerous than today
“…safety, the sense of it being okay to be yourself, is what makes this such a magical read…”—Richard Derus
BOOK LISTS
CBC Books | Confluence on CBC Books' fall fiction preview
49th Shelf | Most Anticipated Fall 2026 Fiction
BC Creates | Your Fall Reading List from BC’s Book Publishers
BC Living | 40 Great New B.C. Books to Read This Autumn
“…a deeply moving gay coming-of-age story set in the Fraser Valley of the 1950s. It’s a fitting tribute to the authors’ real-life love story.”—Sheri Radford
INTERVIEWS & PROFILES
Trevor Corkum’s blog | a labour of love: alex and lucian's story
“When Lucian approached me about reading and commenting on an early draft of Alex’ unpublished stories, I did so gratefully…. Lucian has worked diligently on the manuscript since then…. This fall, the result of that labour of love, a co-mingling of minds and creativity, appears in Canadian bookstores. Confluence is great storytelling, a fresh and vital novel…”
Ed Seaward’s blog | Profiles from the Bright Side of the Road
“The more I have explored Lucian’s life with him the more I have come to sense that underlying tension, conflict, growing up in the 1950s and 60s, his feelings of isolation and loneliness set against a desire to have community, to be productive, and, most of all, to find love…”
Reader’s Delight | Episode XXXIII, audio, 51 minutes
It was another amazing episode of Reader's Delight, Suzanne Craig-Whytock’s show on CKMS 102.7 FM Radio Waterloo. I was honoured to be on the program with the wonderful writers Richard Harrison and Liz Johnston. Also joining the program was David from the online bookstore Woolf & Company.
BOOK LAUNCHES
Toronto launch| video, 44 minutes (with time-stamps)
It was a full house at Another Story Bookshop for the Toronto launch of Confluence. The lively conversation between Lucian and Toronto author Ken Harvey explored the unique nature of this collaborative effort.
Agassiz launch | video, 1 hour (with time-stamps)
Confluence came home to the Upper Fraser Valley at this packed event at the Agassiz Public Library. The conversation and performed readings moderated by author and artist Nicole Dumas took place on what would have been Alex’s 86th birthday!
Anchorage launch | video, 1 hour
Alaskans filled the Georgia Blue Gallery for a discussion moderated by Martha Amore about writing and creating this unusual co-authored project. It was an evening of laughter and reconnecting of friends from Lucian’s 25 years in Anchorage. Part of 2026 Alaska Book Week.
LITERARY JOURNALS
Stories from Confluence have appeared in two Canadian literary journals.
The New Quarterly | “All We Have” | Issue 179, Summer 2026.
Since 1981, The New Quarterly has been one of Canada’s leading literary journals, publishing distinctive fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction.
Prairie Fire | ”Sea Change” | Summer 2025, Volume 46, No. 2.
Prairie Fire is an award-winning literary journal that since 1978 has published work by many notable established and emerging Canadian authors.
AUTHOR TESTIMONIALS
“A queer, West Coast Bildungsroman, Confluence brings readers back to a time before Stonewall, and before Vancouver bristled with mirrored towers. The story it tells is as touching as the novel’s provenance. It simply teems with love—the unrequited, the joyously consummated, and for the authors, love undying.”—Caroline Adderson, author of A Russian Sister and A Way to Be Happy
“[a] powerful novel—simply and directly told, with a great narrative engine and a fully realized emotional arc.”—Trevor Corkum, author of Here with You
“This remarkable act of twin authorship transports you to the thrill of desire at the water’s edge and to an intimacy almost too personal to bear. It’s a reminder that what hides something can also reveal it spectacularly. Run to Confluence. It will give you a lifetime of goosebumps.”—Daniel Allen Cox, author of I Felt the End Before It Came
“Confluence, co-authored by Lucian Childs and his late husband, Alex Turner, is a gift. Many stories are held within this novel: a daring, taboo coming-of-age; an homage to the beautiful BC wilderness; a lively, little-known piece of queer Canadian history. Written with great care and feeling, it is also testament to a love between two men that transcends the ephemeral; I am heartened by their courage.”—Kristyn Dunnion, author
“Confluence is a slow burn. It teems with perfectly-selected details and multi-layered dialogue to create extraordinary tension that climaxes in unexpected ways. I can’t remember when I’ve become so fully immersed in fiction.”—Ken Harvey, author of The Book of Casey Adair
“Confluence captures beautifully the pre-Stonewall moment, but more than that, it is a vivid record of the time in a young queer person's life where desire is all, yearning, fear, and confusion at their most powerful. It brings to mind the novels I searched for and rarely found as a young queer kid, when I needed to see how other people had lived through it. A loving, warm, and turbulent page-turner.”—Richard Mirabella, author of Brother & Sister Enter the Forest
“In Wade and Teddy, Turner and Childs created two boys caught between instinct and fear, loyalty and self-preservation. Confluence is a powerful coming-of-age novel about masculinity, repression, and the devastating consequences of love that cannot safely speak its name.”—Danny Ramadan, author of The Foghorn Echoes
“Confluence is a gushing hot spring of a novel, swirling with sex, self-discovery, and stories that bubble up to insist on being told. In its pages, gay men find community--and communion--through honouring the desires that bind them across vast distances of geography and time. Don't miss this exquisitely unique and heart-wrenchingly beautiful book.”—Matthew J. Trafford, author of Runs in the Blood
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