“I’m not the kind of writer who worries about keeping my characters safe,” Vancouver author Nancy Lee said in a recent interview.

Danger is rife in Nancy’s highly anticipated first novel, The Age, an ambitious and prophetic meditation on the collapse of family, the price of friendship, and the human struggle to find purpose in the face of mortality.

Set in Vancouver in 1984, during the final throes of the Cold War, it follows a teenage girl struggling with nuclear anxiety, and her risky involvement with a group of activists who plan to detonate a bomb at a peace rally in the downtown core.

“Utterly transfixing. It’s a fundamentally human novel, unflinching from the darkness, both outside and within,” writes The Vancouver Sun.

“A mesmerizing tapestry woven not just of plot, but also sentences, which are often comma-spliced-poetic, packed with sensory detail and precise, perfect imagery,” The Globe and Mail’s reviewer asserts.

Nancy’s highly acclaimed first story collection, Dead Girls, was named Book of the Year by NOW Magazine, and was a finalist for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and the Danuta Gleed Literary Award.

Nancy in lives in Steveston, British Columbia, and is an assistant professor in University of British Columbia’s Creative Writing program. She is final judge of this year’s TeensWrite! creative writing contest.

Website: www.nancyleeauthor.com

Twitter: twitter.com/pantsmclee