"Newcastle, Australia, 1972. On a sticky summer night, a choice must be made: To give in to queer desire or suppress it? To venture into the unknown or stay the course? In alternating chapters, we trace the two versions of a life that follow. In one, a teenage girl is caught kissing her neighbor and is kicked out by her parents. She lands at a queer communal home in Sydney called Uranian House, where she meets the people who will forever become her family. Meanwhile, in the second life, a teenage girl pushes down her lustful dreams of her best friend and eventually makes her way to a university in Sydney to study English literature. During pivotal moments, the physical space between these two women closes--like when they each meet the first great loves of their lives in 1977 at a protest, or when, almost a decade later, they are both rushed to the hospital with only a curtain between them. Through the AIDS crisis--and from classrooms to art galleries, beds to bars, and hospitals to homes--we witness these two lives shadow each other until, finally and poignantly, they collide"-- Dust jacket flap.
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