The Winter Solstice. A diner in Montreal. A movie. A photograph. A name. What may seem like floating bits of trivia are actually the anchor points of our lives, the details that tell us who we are and where we are going. They are the air we breathe, shared between strangers without a second thought. They are the avenues through which humanity flows. Hélène Rioux's collection of interconnected stories about cab drivers and dancers, painters and writers, Russians and Mexicans, and fathers and daughters, portrays our world the way Escher would a intricate, troubling, fantastic, and always surprising. Wednesday Night at the End of The World is a celebration of all that we have in common, whether we know it or not; that despite loneliness, none of us are truly alone.

With her follow-up to Wednesday Night at the End of the World, Hélène Rioux explores the landscape of the written word in search of lost paradises. It is a collection of interconnected tales in which people from vastly different walks of life are united in their search—spanning cultures, histories, and geographies—for what they have lost and what they never a soulmate, a soul, childhood, and a reason to go on living.