Stray City, Chelsey Johnson

Description

Stray City
by Chelsey Johnson
Paperback | March 19, 2019

What happens when the family you’ve built collides with the future you never planned for?

In Stray City, Chelsey Johnson delivers a warm, funny, and incisive debut novel about queer identity, chosen family, and the messy realities of adulthood. Twenty-three-year-old artist Andrea Morales has escaped her Midwestern Catholic upbringing—and the closet—to build a life within Portland’s close-knit lesbian underground. Her community is vibrant, opinionated, and fiercely loyal, offering a sense of belonging Andrea once thought impossible.

Then, during a moment of grief and bad decision-making, Andrea crosses an invisible line and sleeps with a man. When she discovers she’s pregnant, the foundations of her carefully constructed life begin to shake. Against the advice and disbelief of her friends, Andrea decides to have the baby, setting off a series of changes that will reshape her understanding of love, responsibility, and home.

Ten years later, Andrea’s sharp, curious daughter Lucia begins asking questions about the father she’s never known, forcing Andrea to confront the past she tried to outrun. As old relationships resurface and new truths emerge, Andrea must reckon with how much of herself she’s hidden—even from the people she loves most.

Tender, sharply observed, and often laugh-out-loud funny, Stray City is an anti-romantic comedy about queer life, motherhood, and belonging. It’s a love letter to Portland, to imperfect communities, and to the idea that family is something we keep inventing, again and again.

This title is a remainder, offered at half the original cover price. Remainder copies are new and unread, but may show minor shelf wear.