Torn Symmetry

A lyrical work of literary fiction set in 1990s British Columbia, Torn Symmetry explores identity, abandonment, and belonging through the eyes of an intersex child in search of love and acceptance. Clover Nelson has always lived on the margins. Abandoned as an infant for reasons no one would explain, he grows up at Whispering Hearts Orphanage—isolated, ridiculed, and quietly carrying a secret that marks him as different. Everything changes when he meets Ethan, a boy from privilege who offers him the friendship and belonging he has always been denied. For the first time, Clover begins to imagine a life beyond the cruel walls of the orphanage, a life where he might finally be seen. But the past cannot stay buried. As truths about his parents and his identity begin to surface, Clover finds himself trapped between the world he longs to enter and the loyalties he cannot betray. To reclaim what was lost, he must risk everything—including the only bond he has ever known. Poignant and powerful, Torn Symmetry is a story of identity, betrayal, and the search for acceptance in a world that insists on drawing lines between who belongs and who does not.