THE WOMAN WHO LIFED BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL

Award-winning author Kai Cheng Thom returns to fiction in a gothic exploration of pleasure, grief, forgiveness, and trauma through the story of a trans woman sex worker who possesses magical healing powers.

Lilith, once known as Lila, is a fallen woman. Formerly an accomplished psychotherapist, she now lives in the crumbling ruin of a Victorian manor in Montreal's red-light district and sells sexual intimacy for a living. Yet Lilith's touch bears something of the divine: through physical contact, she is able to heal the sick and bring solace to the wounded, an ancestral gift that she calls "he gleam."

But while Lilith's healing gift brings comfort and pleasure to her johns, it also attracts dangerous forces and exacts a devastating price. For Lilith is haunted, stalked by a ghost from her past who is determined to bring about a reckoning that will force her to face her past. And soon, Lilith will have to make an impossible choice that will define her in life, death, and the place beyond.

KAI CHENG THOM is a writer, performer, lasagna lover, and wicked witch. Her work includes From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea, a children's picture book; Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl's Confabulous Memoir, a novel; a place called No Homeland, a book of poetry; and I Hope We Chose Love: A Trans Girl's Notes from the End of the World, a forthcoming collection of essays and poetry. Kai performs at festivals, theatres, and poetry slams, and has appeared at the Blue Metropolis Festival, the Canadian Festival of Spoken Words, and Toronto's Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, where she performed her solo theatre show, “Swallowing Chains.” Most recently, Kai added “advice columnist” to her repertoire with her new column for Xtra, “Ask Kai: Advice for the Apocalypse.” Kai Cheng Thom lives in Toronto.