Yellow Pine

Rose is a 39-year-old single mother living in the desert town of Tecopa, California. Five years have passed since she divorced her husband, relinquished primary custody of her daughter Juniper, and returned to the place where she was raised by an alcoholic, emotionally absent mother. The story takes place a few years after the Covid-19 pandemic, and Rose is learning how to live what she calls “the other side of the portal”: a life centred on self-reflection, political engagement, and resisting what she believes are the damaging myths American culture has imposed on her. Despite this renewed sense of purpose, Rose is deeply lonely. In Tecopa she had been close to her AA sponsor, Jane, an older woman who died during the pandemic, and she aches for Juniper, whom she now only sees during school holidays. Then, unexpectedly, Rose receives a phone call from Miles.

Miles was Rose’s first love when she was a university student. Rose had grown up poor and stigmatized as “white trash,” while Miles came from a middle-class background and was intellectual, sharp, and charismatic. Rose fell intensely in love with him, but Miles betrayed her by cheating, leaving her heartbroken. His reappearance in her life fills Rose with fear, yet she feels compelled to surrender to the universe and let him back in. Miles tells her that he supports her rejection of mainstream American values and claims he is willing to live with her on “the other side of the portal.”

Rose and Miles quickly slip into an intoxicating honeymoon phase. Rose finds herself just as deeply in love with him as she was years before. They shut themselves away in Rose’s isolated desert house, spending their time making love, talking endlessly, and savouring their reunion. Before long, Rose tells Miles that she is in love with him. He receives this warmly, but does not yet say that he feels the same.