<p>While working to restore an historic theatre in a seedy part of the city, a graduate student named Anthea searches to find her best friend, lost to the rhetoric of an itinerant street mystic. Almost a century earlier, Liam, a tenth-rate tenor, visits the same theatre while eking out a career on the dying Vaudeville circuits of the day. In both eras, an apocalyptic strain of mysticism threatens their existence: Anthea contends with a nascent New Age movement in the heart of the city while Liam encounters a radical theosophical commune along the coast of British Columbia, who appear to be building … something.</p> <p><i>The Paradise Engine</i> unfolds across a colourful backdrop of labour organizers, immaculately-attired cultists, ambitious socialites, basement offices and coffee shops. Its cast of characters and historical setting recalls Robertson Davies’ <i>Fifth Business</i> or Thomas Pynchon’s <i>Against the Day</i>, while its approach to memory and community is reminiscent of <i>The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle</i> by Haruki Murakami.</p><p><br>Praise for <i>The Paradise Engine</i><br><br>'[a] mystifying story that melds the Vaudeville era of Vancouver history with contemporary Vancouver.'<br>~ <i>BC Bookworld</i><br><br>'Rebecca Campbell brings intelligence and mystery to this strange indie tale.'<br>~ Thomas Hodd, <i>Telegraph-Journal</i><br><br>'What <i>The Paradise Engine</i> invites us to consider is the form, the meaning, and the price of going on. Immortality, the story warns us, always demands a sacrifice.'<br>~ Jennifer Quist, <i>The Rusty Toque</i></p>