A warm, funny, and whip-smart debut novel about rebellious youth, inconceivable motherhood, and the complications of belongingâto a city, a culture, and a familyâwhen none of them can quite contain who you really are.
All of us were refugees of the nuclear family . . .
Twenty-four-year-old artist Andrea Morales escaped her Midwestern Catholic childhoodâand the closetâto create a home and life for herself within the thriving but insular lesbian underground of Portland, Oregon. But one drunken night, reeling from a bad breakup and a friendâs betrayal, she recklessly crosses enemy lines and hooks up with a man. To her utter shock, Andrea soon discovers sheâs pregnantâand despite the concerns of her astonished circle of gay friends, she decides to have the baby.
A decade later, when her precocious daughter Lucia starts asking questions about the father sheâs never known, Andrea is forced to reconcile the past she hoped to leave behind with the life sheâs worked so hard to build.
A thoroughly modern and original anti-romantic comedy, Stray City is an unabashedly entertaining literary debut about the families weâre born into and the families we choose, about finding yourself by breaking the rules, and making bad decisions for all the right reasons.