Still Life with June: A Novel in Bloomington, MN

A disaffected writer gets caught in the morass of complicated human relationships when he appropriates the life of a former patient and befriends his mentally challenged sister.
The people in gay bars on Christmas Day are so desperate for basic human contact that they'd go home with a Doc Marten shoe if it made a move, and maybe even if it didn't.
So begins the story of Cameron Dodds, a disenfranchised writer who visits gay bars on Christmas and works at a Salvation Army Drug and Alcohol Treatment Center in order to steal the stories of the people he meets there. But when Cameron finds a patient hanged in the utilities closet, his infatuation with other people's stories becomes an obsession. Assuming the man's identity, Cameron seeks out and forges a relationship with the victim's mentally challenged sister, who lives in a home uptown. As Cameron becomes more involved in the woman's life, he begins to discover truths that will challenge him to the very core of his existence.