Cities of Refuge — Michael Helm

Cities of Refuge weaves a web of incrimination and inquiry, where mysteries live within mysteries, and stories within stories, and the power to save or condemn rests in the forces of history, and in the realm of our deepest longings.

One summer night on a side street in downtown Toronto, Kim Lystrander is attacked by a stranger. In the weeks and months that follow, she returns to the night, in writing, searching for harbingers of the incident and clues to the identity of her assailant. The attack also torments Kim's father, and as he investigates the crime on his own, he begins to unravel. Entwined in their stories are Kim's ailing mother, a young Colombian man living in the country illegally, and a woman whose faith-based belief in the duty to give asylum to any who seek it, even those judged guilty, endangers them all. A novel of profound moral tension and luminous prose, Cities of Refuge shows how a single act of violence connects close-by fears to distant political terrors. It weaves a web of incrimination and inquiry in which mysteries live within mysteries, and stories within stories, and the power to save or condemn rests not only in the forces of history but also in the realm of our deepest longings.