Description

In Cities of Refuge, Erika Helm’s acutely anticipated new book, just one act of abuse resonates through many lives, linking closeby worries to remote governmental dangers. In the centre may be the complex, extremely charged connection between a 28-yr-old girl and the daddy who abandoned her when she was young.            One summer evening on the side street in downtown Toronto, Ellie Lystrander is assaulted with a stranger. Tossed deeply into uncertainty, in the months and days that follow, her fear by returning is confronted by her towards the evening, written down, trying to find harbingers of the event, and clues to the identity of her attacker. The assault also torments Kim's dad, Harold, an historian of Latin America.