I am from Halifax, saltwater city, a place of silted genius, sudden women, figures floating in all waters.

“People from Halifax are all famous,” my sister Faith has said. “Because everyone in Halifax knows each other’s business.”

From basement rec rooms to midnight railway tracks, Action Transfers to Smarties boxes crammed with joints,

from Paul McCartney on the kitchen radio to their furious teenaged cover of The Ramones, Aubrey McKee and his

familiars navigate late adolescence amidst the old-monied decadence of Halifax. An arcana of oddball angels, Alex

Pugsley’s long-awaited debut novel follows rich-kid drug dealers and junior tennis brats, émigré heart surgeons and

small-time thugs, renegade private school girls and runaway children as they try to make sense of the city into which

they’ve been born. Part coming-of-age-story, part social chronicle, and part study of the myths that define our growing

up, Aubrey McKee introduces a breathtakingly original new voice