What do you think?
Rate this book
Confluence
An intimate, deeply moving queer coming-of-age novel that evokes '50s small-town life and the surprisingly wild pre-Stonewall '60s
In 1956, lonely teenager Teddy is drawn to the water and woods surrounding his small town, where he meets bad boy Wade and becomes overwhelmed by his attraction to him. During the rapturous early period of their friendship, the two range over the area’s mountains and waterways before falling out after high school over Teddy’s sexuality. In the years following their separation, Teddy—now going by Ted—struggles to live openly as a gay man, finding and losing lovers at parties, dance clubs, and cruising spots in a surprisingly wild pre-Stonewall gay Vancouver. He is befriended by a lively crew of eccentrics—a new chosen family—who aid him in finding fulfillment both as a gay man and as an artist. Returning to his hometown nearly a decade later, Ted must decide whether or not to reunite with the one who once meant so much to the sexy and mercurial Wade.
Confluence is a collaboration between late author Alex Turner and his husband, Lucian Childs. Drawing on his sixty-year history with his beloved West Coast home, Turner wrote much of this beautifully rendered novel before he passed away in 2019. Childs, an award-winning author himself, completed the work, a novel that is simultaneously poetic, humorous, and exuberantly down to earth.
This publication meets the EPUB Accessibility requirements and it also meets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG-AA). It is screen-reader friendly and is accessible to persons with disabilities. This book is defined with accessible structural markup. This book contains various accessibility features such as alternative text for images, table of contents, page-list, landmark, reading order and semantic structure.
In 1956, lonely teenager Teddy is drawn to the water and woods surrounding his small town, where he meets bad boy Wade and becomes overwhelmed by his attraction to him. During the rapturous early period of their friendship, the two range over the area’s mountains and waterways before falling out after high school over Teddy’s sexuality. In the years following their separation, Teddy—now going by Ted—struggles to live openly as a gay man, finding and losing lovers at parties, dance clubs, and cruising spots in a surprisingly wild pre-Stonewall gay Vancouver. He is befriended by a lively crew of eccentrics—a new chosen family—who aid him in finding fulfillment both as a gay man and as an artist. Returning to his hometown nearly a decade later, Ted must decide whether or not to reunite with the one who once meant so much to the sexy and mercurial Wade.
Confluence is a collaboration between late author Alex Turner and his husband, Lucian Childs. Drawing on his sixty-year history with his beloved West Coast home, Turner wrote much of this beautifully rendered novel before he passed away in 2019. Childs, an award-winning author himself, completed the work, a novel that is simultaneously poetic, humorous, and exuberantly down to earth.
This publication meets the EPUB Accessibility requirements and it also meets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG-AA). It is screen-reader friendly and is accessible to persons with disabilities. This book is defined with accessible structural markup. This book contains various accessibility features such as alternative text for images, table of contents, page-list, landmark, reading order and semantic structure.
- GenresHistorical
194 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 1, 2026
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
Review of advance copy received from Edelweiss+
✰ 3 stars ✰
The earlier chapters highlighting Teddy and Wade's friendship - the buildup and the burn-out - were believable, capturing the apprehension of first love and the deep longing for more. 😢 Teddy's fearful helplessness at Wade's aggression and charm was palpable, and it hurt to see their relationship become so fractured and take such a painful route.
I struggled with the years that followed. While I see it as Ted's coming-of-age exploring the opportunities and lovers at his disposal as a handsome young gay man living in pre-Stonewall Vancouver - I never truly connected with any of the eccentric or charismatic characters that flitted in and out of his life.🫤
“Freedom at last. A new way of being together. And a plea for those who didn’t understand to get out of the way.”
That feeling of disconnect made sense when, at the end of the novel, the Author's Note reveals that this really was a collection of vignettes - intermittent stories that showcased various stages of Ted's life. 🔄 That tell and no show was prevalent during the police inspections, recounting his romantic tales with a worldly noncholance - all the while, echoes of Wade still haunted him.
Perhaps that is where the title, Confluence rings true - how Ted's growth apart from him eventually would find its way back to the unclosed pivotal chapter of his life - like rivers, the flowing together of two ideas converging at one point. One paved with tension and confusion, but also an uncertain, but hopeful yearning that maybe absence and separation allowed a mature outlook on both sides to see what they had been—what was probably meant to be.
For what these 8 or so short stories captured was the intimate bond built amongst the daring and wild gay community, one of solidarity and recognition of looking out for one another in a way that makes you feel welcome amidst a not so very welcoming mindset with a deep sense of gratitude. Brothers in arms, so to speak. 🫂
“A raw, new thing, suggesting insecurity and hope, presaging all that would unfold.”
And after Wade's harsh rejection, the Vancouver winds and waves guided Ted to find and nurture his own character in ways hurt and hate would have smothered his creative spark and energy to be more true to himself. “Isn’t what’s hidden from view the thing that draws you to art?” 🥺 It's both a loss and a win that somewhat softens the blow that sadly still lingers like a heartache you never quite forgot.
The writing was a strange mix of flowery and stilted at times, but Ted's and Wade's early years of that meaningful friendship carried the most heart for me. It's disappointing then that the ending didn't give us the presumed abridged version of their eventual dynamic. I didn't care much for his romantic interests, but they all played an integral role in allowing Ted to discover the kind of person he wanted to be and what life was best intended for him. 🌈
“It wasn’t that danger lurking below that sparked the pulse through my limbs but the depth of my longing for it.”
The earlier chapters highlighting Teddy and Wade's friendship - the buildup and the burn-out - were believable, capturing the apprehension of first love and the deep longing for more. 😢 Teddy's fearful helplessness at Wade's aggression and charm was palpable, and it hurt to see their relationship become so fractured and take such a painful route.
I struggled with the years that followed. While I see it as Ted's coming-of-age exploring the opportunities and lovers at his disposal as a handsome young gay man living in pre-Stonewall Vancouver - I never truly connected with any of the eccentric or charismatic characters that flitted in and out of his life.🫤
“Freedom at last. A new way of being together. And a plea for those who didn’t understand to get out of the way.”
That feeling of disconnect made sense when, at the end of the novel, the Author's Note reveals that this really was a collection of vignettes - intermittent stories that showcased various stages of Ted's life. 🔄 That tell and no show was prevalent during the police inspections, recounting his romantic tales with a worldly noncholance - all the while, echoes of Wade still haunted him.
Perhaps that is where the title, Confluence rings true - how Ted's growth apart from him eventually would find its way back to the unclosed pivotal chapter of his life - like rivers, the flowing together of two ideas converging at one point. One paved with tension and confusion, but also an uncertain, but hopeful yearning that maybe absence and separation allowed a mature outlook on both sides to see what they had been—what was probably meant to be.
For what these 8 or so short stories captured was the intimate bond built amongst the daring and wild gay community, one of solidarity and recognition of looking out for one another in a way that makes you feel welcome amidst a not so very welcoming mindset with a deep sense of gratitude. Brothers in arms, so to speak. 🫂
“A raw, new thing, suggesting insecurity and hope, presaging all that would unfold.”
And after Wade's harsh rejection, the Vancouver winds and waves guided Ted to find and nurture his own character in ways hurt and hate would have smothered his creative spark and energy to be more true to himself. “Isn’t what’s hidden from view the thing that draws you to art?” 🥺 It's both a loss and a win that somewhat softens the blow that sadly still lingers like a heartache you never quite forgot.
The writing was a strange mix of flowery and stilted at times, but Ted's and Wade's early years of that meaningful friendship carried the most heart for me. It's disappointing then that the ending didn't give us the presumed abridged version of their eventual dynamic. I didn't care much for his romantic interests, but they all played an integral role in allowing Ted to discover the kind of person he wanted to be and what life was best intended for him. 🌈
September 4, 2026
Rating: 4.25* of five
The Publisher Says: An intimate, deeply moving queer coming-of-age novel that evokes '50s small-town life and the surprisingly wild pre-Stonewall '60s
In 1956, lonely teenager Teddy is drawn to the water and woods surrounding his small town, where he meets bad boy Wade and becomes overwhelmed by his attraction to him. During the rapturous early period of their friendship, the two range over the area’s mountains and waterways before falling out after high school over Teddy’s sexuality. In the years following their separation, Teddy—now going by Ted—struggles to live openly as a gay man, finding and losing lovers at parties, dance clubs, and cruising spots in a surprisingly wild pre-Stonewall gay Vancouver. He is befriended by a lively crew of eccentrics—a new chosen family—who aid him in finding fulfillment both as a gay man and as an artist. Returning to his hometown nearly a decade later, Ted must decide whether or not to reunite with the one who once meant so much to him: the sexy and mercurial Wade.
Confluence is a collaboration between late author Alex Turner and his husband, Lucian Childs. Drawing on his sixty-year history with his beloved West Coast home, Turner wrote much of this beautifully rendered novel before he passed away in 2019. Childs, an award-winning author himself, completed the work, a novel that is simultaneously poetic, humorous, and exuberantly down to earth.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: "Exuberant" is a very good word to use with this novel's affect in mind. It's inherent, in a funny way, in the idea of coming of age; it feels a lot harder and more like a chore as you're doing it than the reality from the outside, and later the memory of it, report.
Teddy and Wade, misfits in their small town of origin, do what misfits most often do. They find common cause, they make a mutual defense pact against the world...in this case more like the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact than the Kellogg–Briand Pact, one ending when they began a war and the other still in force. Teddy's attraction to Wade is different than the usual alliance of convenience only neither knows it until it's been the glue between them for quite a while.
It's quite a common experience, the different relationships/same people one. As always there's an event that brings out the need to discuss what each feels as adolescence presses its hormonal buttons. Wade, being straight and it being 1956, doesn't respond very kindly or acceptingly towards Teddy, hastening his departure for the big city of Vancouver.
Life, as is its wont, happens; Teddy becomes Ted, a good-looking young queer-about-town exuberantly exploring the joys of sex and the consolations of friendship. It's a story I've read oh so many times, set in a place I've never been but recognize as a cognate with my natal place San Francisco, my coming-of-age place Austin, and my home Manhattan. It's the island of safety in an unsafe world.
That safety, the sense of it being okay to be yourself, is what makes this such a magical read. Its hormonal passages aren't lacking in number or excitement. Its more important idea, though, is the safety to explore the hormonal drives because there's a safe place to do it, albeit still without any legal protection; but a loving group of likeminded people to cushion the fall from the heights of Love and the pangs of loneliness that follow the ends of things. That's honestly more important in the long run.
Of course a novel will always need resolutions to big unresolved threads in a life. Reality doesn't impose such conditions on us. We-the-reader need to know, though, what happened to Wade who stayed behind.
We find out.
It was a pleasure to be with these young gay men in their youth, distant by decades from my own youth and most of a century removed from the present. It is vital to have these words of witness from someone who was there to understand it from the inside, who lived its reality and thought it good to bring those moments to life for us who followed in time. I hope those younger than I am will find those words, realize how similar humans are to each other, how much different their own time is from the story's time and hopefully to find those differences contain mostly improvements.
We live in a time of miracles being commonplace. Appreciating that is a great way to honor those who worked for a world better than their own to come into being.
The Publisher Says: An intimate, deeply moving queer coming-of-age novel that evokes '50s small-town life and the surprisingly wild pre-Stonewall '60s
In 1956, lonely teenager Teddy is drawn to the water and woods surrounding his small town, where he meets bad boy Wade and becomes overwhelmed by his attraction to him. During the rapturous early period of their friendship, the two range over the area’s mountains and waterways before falling out after high school over Teddy’s sexuality. In the years following their separation, Teddy—now going by Ted—struggles to live openly as a gay man, finding and losing lovers at parties, dance clubs, and cruising spots in a surprisingly wild pre-Stonewall gay Vancouver. He is befriended by a lively crew of eccentrics—a new chosen family—who aid him in finding fulfillment both as a gay man and as an artist. Returning to his hometown nearly a decade later, Ted must decide whether or not to reunite with the one who once meant so much to him: the sexy and mercurial Wade.
Confluence is a collaboration between late author Alex Turner and his husband, Lucian Childs. Drawing on his sixty-year history with his beloved West Coast home, Turner wrote much of this beautifully rendered novel before he passed away in 2019. Childs, an award-winning author himself, completed the work, a novel that is simultaneously poetic, humorous, and exuberantly down to earth.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: "Exuberant" is a very good word to use with this novel's affect in mind. It's inherent, in a funny way, in the idea of coming of age; it feels a lot harder and more like a chore as you're doing it than the reality from the outside, and later the memory of it, report.
Teddy and Wade, misfits in their small town of origin, do what misfits most often do. They find common cause, they make a mutual defense pact against the world...in this case more like the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact than the Kellogg–Briand Pact, one ending when they began a war and the other still in force. Teddy's attraction to Wade is different than the usual alliance of convenience only neither knows it until it's been the glue between them for quite a while.
It's quite a common experience, the different relationships/same people one. As always there's an event that brings out the need to discuss what each feels as adolescence presses its hormonal buttons. Wade, being straight and it being 1956, doesn't respond very kindly or acceptingly towards Teddy, hastening his departure for the big city of Vancouver.
Life, as is its wont, happens; Teddy becomes Ted, a good-looking young queer-about-town exuberantly exploring the joys of sex and the consolations of friendship. It's a story I've read oh so many times, set in a place I've never been but recognize as a cognate with my natal place San Francisco, my coming-of-age place Austin, and my home Manhattan. It's the island of safety in an unsafe world.
That safety, the sense of it being okay to be yourself, is what makes this such a magical read. Its hormonal passages aren't lacking in number or excitement. Its more important idea, though, is the safety to explore the hormonal drives because there's a safe place to do it, albeit still without any legal protection; but a loving group of likeminded people to cushion the fall from the heights of Love and the pangs of loneliness that follow the ends of things. That's honestly more important in the long run.
Of course a novel will always need resolutions to big unresolved threads in a life. Reality doesn't impose such conditions on us. We-the-reader need to know, though, what happened to Wade who stayed behind.
We find out.
It was a pleasure to be with these young gay men in their youth, distant by decades from my own youth and most of a century removed from the present. It is vital to have these words of witness from someone who was there to understand it from the inside, who lived its reality and thought it good to bring those moments to life for us who followed in time. I hope those younger than I am will find those words, realize how similar humans are to each other, how much different their own time is from the story's time and hopefully to find those differences contain mostly improvements.
We live in a time of miracles being commonplace. Appreciating that is a great way to honor those who worked for a world better than their own to come into being.
Review of advance copy received from Edelweiss+
"What I wanted was as blurred as the buildings across the way."
Confluence by Alex Turner and Lucian Childs asks one simple question: What are we willing to risk for love?
After finishing this book, it easily became one of my favorites of all time.
Ted is one of the most relatable and heartbreaking characters I have ever read. The decisions he makes and all of his relationships feel so youthful. Truly, Ted has so much love in his heart, that he doesn't know what to do with it, leading to questionable decisions; and while it was hard to read at points, it was so raw, relatable, and vulnerable.
Outside of the story itself, the writing style, while complex, was so good and nice to immersive myself in. The thought-out historical context really added to the story in a very unique way as well, and made me feel like I was present myself.
I dont want to spoil anything because the book is quite short, but overall, Confluence is so relatable and such an important spotlight on many current and historic issues.
Thank you Edelweiss and Arsenal Pulp for the ARC of Confluence.
Confluence by Alex Turner and Lucian Childs asks one simple question: What are we willing to risk for love?
After finishing this book, it easily became one of my favorites of all time.
Ted is one of the most relatable and heartbreaking characters I have ever read. The decisions he makes and all of his relationships feel so youthful. Truly, Ted has so much love in his heart, that he doesn't know what to do with it, leading to questionable decisions; and while it was hard to read at points, it was so raw, relatable, and vulnerable.
Outside of the story itself, the writing style, while complex, was so good and nice to immersive myself in. The thought-out historical context really added to the story in a very unique way as well, and made me feel like I was present myself.
I dont want to spoil anything because the book is quite short, but overall, Confluence is so relatable and such an important spotlight on many current and historic issues.
Thank you Edelweiss and Arsenal Pulp for the ARC of Confluence.
September 28, 2026
Engrossing story set in British Columbia's Fraser River-region towns (Harrison Hot Springs, Agassiz, Chilliwack) and later, Vancouver. A glimpse into 1950s-60s teenage & 20-something friendships, with their intense longings, shame and ecstasy. The central character grows into an emerging gay self-awareness, striving to make something of his life --- and does. The book is unique in that Alex Turner's linked yet fragmented short stories were fashioned into the longer arc of a novel by his spouse, author Lucian Childs (Turner himself died in 2019 at the age of 77). An unusual collaboration, and it works!
September 27, 2026
In their novel Confluence, authors Alex Turner and Lucian Childs craft an unforgettable emotional journey through their main characters, Teddy and Wade. The narrative masterfully blends themes of love, lust, belonging, family, heartbreak, self-discovery, and trust—perfectly mirroring the book's title. Rich in intrigue, excitement, and vivid imagery, the story resonated with me deeply. Beyond the pages, seeing Lucian act as the steward of Alex's legacy by completing this book is a beautiful tribute. I thoroughly enjoyed this wonderful read.
May 17, 2026
i don’t wanna talk about it
Review of advance copy received from Edelweiss+
A beautiful and tender coming-of-age. So clearly written with love.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews