Edinburgh

Fee is a Korean-American boy in Maine who lives largely inside a private fantasy of spirits and heroes. He has a fine soprano voice and sings in a professional boys' choir. There he meets Peter, his first love.

The choir director abuses the boys in his care. Fee cannot protect himself, Peter or the others, and a silence settles over the group, deepening as each boy is victimised. The friendship between Fee and Peter wears away under shared shame, and Fee is left with a gap he cannot fill.

The director is arrested and imprisoned, yet the harm outlasts the trial. Peter sets himself on fire, and another boy shoots himself in the head. At college Fee drifts, loving men he will not sleep with and sleeping with men he does not love. He attempts suicide and survives.

As an adult, Fee returns to Maine with his lover Bridey and takes a job teaching art at a private boarding school. One of his students is Warden, the choir director's son, who knows nothing of his father's crimes. Warden's resemblance to Peter pulls Fee back toward the past he has avoided.

This is a literary novel about childhood sexual abuse and its long aftermath, told with a dark, serious tone. It deals directly with suicide and trauma.