Böcker av Jeffrey Luscombe

From the backdrop of an impoverished steel-working community in working-class Hamilton, Ontario, in the 1970s, To Refrain From Embracing follows the trials faced by a small family after suicide-attempt results in 33-year-old veteran Ted being checked into the Hamilton Psychiatric Hospital. His wife Gloria struggles with family finances and growing worries related to the well-being of their 10-year-old son Josh while also re-embracing her Indigenous identity through encounters with a local steelworker and remembrances of her mother. Josh, meanwhile, struggles with his nascent sexuality, lack of acceptance from his peers, and fears about his father's mental health, all while entering into a friendship with a troubled neighbourhood teen.To Refrain From Embracing is an immersive, naturalistic, and darkly comedic exploration of a family pushed up against personal and societal precepts of class, race, and sexuality.

Josh Moore lives with his family on the 'wrong side' of Hamilton, a gritty industrial city in southwestern Ontario. As a young boy, Josh plots an escape for a better life far from the steel mills that lined the bay. But fate has other plans and Josh discovers his adult life in Toronto is just as fraught with as many insecurities and missteps as his youth and he soon learns that no matter how far away he might run, he will never be able to leave his hometown behind. Jeffrey Luscombe's debut novel of repressed sexuality, family tension, and gritty locale will enthrall readers.