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CONFLUENCE
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REVIEWS
Xtra* | Confluence brings Vancouver’s queer history to life
“The late Alex Turner and his husband, Lucian Childs, have written 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
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
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
BOOK LISTS
CBC Books | Confluence on CBC Books' fall fiction preview
49th Shelf | Most Anticipated Fall 2026 Fiction
INTERVIEWS
Trevor Corkum interview | a labour of love: alex and lucian's story
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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