CONFLUENCE

Coming September 1,2026 | Pre-orders available now

“Sea Change”
—story in Prairie Fire

The penultimate story from Confluence appears in the summer 2025 issue of the distinguished Canadian literary journal, Prairie Fire.

A NOVEL-IN-STORIES FROM ARSENAL PULP PRESS
by Alex Turner and Lucian Childs

Confluence is a gushing hot spring of a novel, swirling with sex, self-discovery, and stories that bubble up to insist on being told.—Matthew J. Trafford, author of Runs in the Blood 

IN 1956, FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD TEDDY—a lonely boy drawn to the water and woods surrounding his small town of Harrison Hot Springs, BC—is overwhelmed by his feelings when he meets the bad boy Wade.

Over the rapturous early years of their friendship, the two range over the area’s mountains and waterways before falling out after high school because of Teddy’s sexuality. In their separation that follows, Ted, as he calls himself, is befriended by a lively crew of eccentrics—a new, chosen family—who aid him in finding fulfillment as an artist and gay man in a surprisingly wild Vancouver. In the novel’s poignant conclusion, Ted must decide whether to reunite with the man who once meant so much to him: the sexy and mercurial Wade.

While this tale of star-crossed friends entertains with humour and cliffhangers, it furthers our understanding of the little-described decade in queer Canadian history prior to the 1969 Stonewall riots—the event that sparked the modern gay rights movement.

As the conformist ’50s were morphing into the politically divisive and freewheeling ’60s, in Vancouver the move toward acceptance of gay love and sexuality was sidelined in the broader push for sexual liberation. And the city’s queer community—far from benefitting from the era’s drive for civil rights—suffered continued discrimination and police harassment. Even so, Vancouver was a mecca for a new generation of queer people, whose social networks and gathering places—albeit largely out of sight—were the foundation for the thriving LGBTQ+ culture that blossomed post-Stonewall.

Even Harrison Hot Springs was powerfully affected by this cultural moment. Its new artistic influences and social practices—the books and generation-defining music—were all brought home, largely by its returning sons and daughters.

This novel-in-stories by Alex Turner and Lucian Childs draws on Alex’s sixty-year history with this magical place—the beauty of its mountains and waterways, the mores of Vancouver’s bohemian enclave and the small Upper Fraser Valley towns. The resulting work is a deep evocation of time and place, revealed through language that is both poetic, humorous, and exuberantly down to earth.

ADVANCED PRAISE FOR CONFLUENCE

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 The World After Us

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