TOWARD ANOTHER SHORE
A novella-in-stories by Alex Turner
Coming of age in the Fraser River Valley
In addition to being a gifted visual artist, Alex was an insightful chronicler of his life and times through his memoir writing and short fiction. Toward Another Shore, his novella-in-stories, is a tale of characters embracing a destination far from the one to which they set out.
In 1956, fifteen-year-old Ted—a lonely boy drawn to the water and woods surrounding his small town of Harrison Hot Spring, BC—is overwhelmed by his feelings when he meets the bad boy Wade. Over the next decade, the story tracks Ted’s blossoming into a young man and his unrequited love for his mercurial friend.
We learn of their rapturous early years ranging over the area’s mountains, their falling out after high school over Ted’s sexuality. Their separation, during which Ted experiences a surprisingly wild pre-Stonewall gay Vancouver—house parties, dance clubs, saunas—all under the constant threat of police harassment.
The final story delves further into Ted and Wade’s shared past, bringing the cycle of their friendship forward another revolution.
These changes are reflected in the moment in which the novella takes place—when the innocence and conformity of the ‘50s morphs into the freewheeling and politically divisive ‘60s. Elvis Presley and the Everly Brothers give way to Bob Dylan and the British Invasion. Bobby socks and poodle skirts are replaced by blue jeans and bare feet, long hair and leather jackets. Demonstrations against the Vietnam War.
This is a period of transformation as well in the Fraser River Valley where the novella is set. The tradition of rafting timber down the Fraser is giving way to trucking the logs out, displacing the rivermen who have for decades made their living riding the booms to the sea.
Alex Turner draws on his sixty-year history with this magical place to create a work of great intimacy and depth. The area’s mountains, its waterways, the mores of its small towns drive the novella’s lyricism—deep evocations of time and place revealed through language that is both poetic, humorous and exuberantly down to earth.
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