Book one
of the Ray Series tells about a
man whose life is in fragments. After he is fired from his
job and fights with his girlfriend, Mexican vacations cannot
cheer the nameless narrator of In Light of Ray. In
desperation, he decides to follow the cryptic advice of Ray,
a shadowy figure he has only met a few times.
His understanding
of Ray’s obscure suggestions takes him away from his friends
and into unemployment, poverty and then homelessness. Drifting
around a grittier Vancouver, he begins to think that the only
way to fix his life is to die. This scheme to disappear so
completely that his problems cannot follow him is profoundly
disrupted when he meets Weed, a girl abandoned on Wreck Beach.
His initial plan of suicide begins to look less feasible,
and he tries to decide, on the basis of Ray’s ambiguous statements,
whether he should die alone or invite her along.
Ultimately
affirming, this novel details a man’s drift from the Vancouver
streets and the emptiness of dead-end jobs to a choice between
embracing community and connection or disappearing into a
waiting squalor.