Brian Payton's debut novel is a dark and comic tale that leads readers into unfamiliar territory past an emotional frontier we all must cross: the uncertain ground between adolescence and adulthood.

High on a cliff overlooking a pulp mill town in British Columbia, sixteen-year-old Bill MacAvoy and his friends lead cloistered lives when other boys their age run free. It may be the fall of 1982, but inside the walls of their Benedictine seminary they inhabit a medieval society steeped in ritual and discipline-a world where black-robed monks move like shadows between doubt and faith.

On the road to certain expulsion, Bill discovers two secrets: one concerns Brother Thomas, the monk who's been watching his every move; the other involves his best friend, Jon. In Bill's hands these secrets prove dangerous weapons. Handled carelessly, they trigger an event that threatens to haunt him for the rest of his life.

5.25 X 8.25 Trade paperback 240 pp ISBN 0-88878-422-8 $18.95 CDN $14.95 US