Emerald City Blues

by Jean Stewart

When the comfortable yuppie world of Chris Olson and Jenifer Hart collides with the desperate lives of Reb and Flynn, two lesbian runaways struggling to survive on the streets of Seattle, the forcast is trouble. A gritty, enormously readable novel of contemporary lesbigay life which raises real questions about the meaning of family and community, and about the walls we construct. A celebration of the healing powers of love.

Genres: Fiction, LGBT, Romance

228 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1996

About the author

Librarian note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Jean Stewart was born and raised in the suburbs of Philadelphia. She loves books, music, movies, dogs, and people who laugh. She was a teacher and a coach for a while, but now she writes. She lives near Seattle with her partner, Susie, two badly behaved dogs, and a reclusive Maine Coon cat named Emily Dickinson.

Reviews

[JulesGP · Rating 5 out of 5]

“There’s a fire in dreaming that lights up a woman’s soul, Reb. And something happens when it goes out. Something that makes the rest of your life a lot darker.”

Emerald City Blues, although published in 1996, is one of the better written books that I’ve read recently. Two stories run parallel that later integrate. Morgan and Rebel are teenagers living precariously on Seattle’s streets, both having escaped abuse at home for being lesbians. Meanwhile, yuppies Chris and Jennifer are trying to move beyond individual grief to start lives with each other.

This book is more about emotional intimacy than the physical so there aren’t really any sex scenes. More strikingly, the author brings out a lot of broader issues like the scare of AIDS, the idea of taking personal responsibility for social ails (if we don’t take care of our vulnerable gay youth, who will?), of forgiving oneself to allow happiness to take hold again. But before you run for the hills, it’s all interwoven into two great stories. I’m adding one more favorite passage:

“I believe,” Jennifer choked, “that th-there are m-moments of great karmic opportunity that come once or twice in a lifetime.” She swallowed, hoping she wasn’t sounding completely crazy. “We enter these moments and set off so many possible outcomes, just by what we dare to risk, what we dare to reveal.” A character’s heartbreaking hindsight on past decisions. It goes on but that would delve into spoiler territory. Great Fallback find for me.

[daisy · Rating 5 out of 5]

this was frickin awesome like ok. Found this in the lesbian section of a little bookstore jn san diego and it was MADE FOR MEEEE!!!!!! def recommend love these characters

[wren4777 · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I was 19, I was kicked out of home for being trans. For nearly two years I was homeless - I was never on the streets, but only because so many incredibly kind people opened up their homes to me, even though they had nothing to gain and everything to lose.

This novel was a sobering reminder of just how much has changed for queer people in the last thirty-odd years, and how much horror and trauma is in living memory for so many. It really makes me think of how lucky I was to be born when I was and not a decade before, because my life could have been very, very different.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought Emerald City Blues in the Seattle Mystery Bookshop. It's something of a mystery to me how it ended up there, but I'm happy that it did. Emerald City Blues is a heartwarming romp through 1990s Seattle. Not the tech side of Microserfs, but the other side. It follows the lives of runaways and "yups" as they navigate intersecting life experiences, challenges, and relationships. While heartwarming, the story resisted corny simplicity and frequently surprised me by supplying the characters with more depth and nuance.

The plot of the story gave me some insight into what it was like to be gay in the 1990s. There was a sentiment that the cities were liberal enclaves encircled by less accepting suburbs and rural areas, which I experienced in 2000s Texas, but with the compounding issue of AIDS and the social stigma that produced. Stewart treated all of these issues with sensitivity and compassion, and while her characters had some emotional baggage, they all fostered a sense of hope that life gets better.

This isn't a book that I would have sought out on my own. I'm glad that it found me. It gave me a thrill to see a story taking place on the streets that I walk every day, but it also made the message feel more personal. Why should we rely on taxes and the government to provide social services? Why shouldn't we take matters into our own hands, particularly when we are uniquely suited to help someone? Books that make us analyze our own lives and give us hope for making positive changes in the world are among the highest art.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

This sweet and gritty novel is properly about teen troubles and lesbian love (teenage and adult). As might be expected from an expert author of speculative fiction (the Isis series), the narrative concerns itself with the sociological dimension of the characters' adventures. The writing is excellent (Stewart has a real gift for bringing settings to life, and her Seattle is so much more physically immediate than the futureworld of Isis, it feels you're IN it while you read). For some reason, the teenagers in the story get the few, really hot (and achingly tender) lovemaking scenes. It's some of the most beautiful erotic writing I've ever read--restrained and intimate all at once.

[Marjorie Elwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite the occasional cliche, this lesbian romance is off-beat enough that it made for a compelling read. The tale of the intersecting lives of two runaways and two yuppies, the story had a strong undercurrent of social commentary and a surprising ending.