The Two Faces of Paradise
by Ted Smith
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9781774391280 | October 2025 | 432 Pages
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Set in the mid-1980s between Canada and Thailand The Two Faces of Paradise rockets Ted Smith onto the scene with this skillful debut. After being conscripted into service by his older brother, Robert Percy reluctantly agrees to return to South-East Asia to find his missing niece-by-marriage, Edith Warren. Armed with little more than grave misgivings and an unruly collection of skeletons in his backpack, Robert sets out for Thailand in search of Edith: daughter of privilege, spurious deserter, one-time confidant and clandestine lover. The Two Faces of Paradise is a treatise on travel and the internal journey of the traveller. It is a redemption story of family, devastating loss, and love.
“Ted Smith’s novel takes the reader on a journey—in the flesh and in memory—from one complicated paradise to another. Through the comings and goings of its restless, haunted characters this wise and gorgeously told tale asks why we go in search of these ideal places, how we find them and then lose them, and why we yearn to return.” —Thomas Wharton, award-winning author of The Book of Rain and Wolf, Moon, Dog
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