Barely out of her teens, Kayla already has some dark and painful secrets – and she’s far from the only one. In Still, a moving and insightful debut novel about sex work and street life by Kelowna, B.C.–based author, writing instructor, and long-time social advocate Joanna Cockerline, trauma is not in short supply. 

Nearly everyone in this book’s ensemble cast of unhoused or street-involved individuals is facing one or more demons that often have less to do with their personal integrity than with the damaging impact of external forces. And while Still suffers from moments of didacticism, Cockerline is successful in creating a compelling narrative while exploring both the suffering and grace in her characters’ lives with sensitivity and care.

Home, for Kayla, used to be a farm outside Guelph, Ontario, where she cared for a gentle gelding named Buddy, before a life-changing injury stole her dream of training horses professionally. Now home is the rough street corners of Leon Avenue in downtown Kelowna, where Kayla engages in sex work for survival, all her possessions housed in a single backpack. 

As solitary as that may sound, Kayla’s new life on Leon is imbued with camaraderie. It is a world where many social norms are upended, yet those who steal or deal drugs often conduct themselves by a strict moral code. To her street family, Kayla is known for staying sober. Street drugs are poisoned, and not all of her friends and colleagues have survived an accidental overdose. Kayla desperately hopes that fate has not befallen her closest friend, Little Zoe, who, as the novel opens, has gone missing. Kayla is determined to find Little Zoe, placing herself at great risk along the way. 

Cockerline’s prose is both spare and unsparing, succinctly conveying the impact of both the elements – “Some nights were so cold it hurt to breathe, until the stinging cold gave way to numbness” – and overlapping traumas. Kayla and her peers possess a striking mindfulness, living vividly in the current moment despite past and present hardships. In her search for her friend, Kayla draws sustenance from Little Zoe’s plain-spoken admonition: “No matter what you’ve been through, you still have that. Ask yourself what you love, and love it. Love it anyway.”

How often street-involved women are murdered or go missing, or get kicked out of shelters for arbitrary reasons, or how Naloxone reverses overdoses (sometimes), or the through line from residential schools and other colonial harm to Indigenous homelessness are matters little understood in many quarters. Consequently, Cockerline does a lot of explaining, and at times it feels like reportage inserted into the narrative. There are also rueful asides about street life’s unfair nature that are unsubtle and become repetitive. 

Just as there are no simple solutions to the intractable ills that overshadow her characters’ lives, Cockerline offers no tidy resolution – for Kayla, for Little Zoe, or any of the others who live, love, and survive on Leon Avenue. But for the reader, she creates a space for understanding and compassion, as well as hope.