It’s the spring of 1965. Martin Luther King is marching on Selma, Alabama. Lyndon B. Johnson is just beginning to show that he thinks escalation of the situation in Vietnam is a good idea. The Russians are ahead of the Americans in the space race. For 23-year-old Ellis Portal, however, it’s not the new but the old that excites. He’s a first-year law student on the staid, tweedy campus of the University of Toronto, Canada. What he wants most is to become an intern to Magistrate Sheldrake Tuppin and to spend time in the magistrate’s clubby chambers high atop the Victorian heap that is Old City Hall. One night, however, the company of Gleason Adams, a man of unquestioned wealth and unquestionable character, Ellis is drawn into a bizarre murder mystery. When the body of this victim disappears from the morgue without a trace, Ellis is reluctantly drawn into areas of the city – and the law – that shake him out of the world of the tweedy campus and thrust him into the seedy world of questionable bars, marginal people, and deeds that have no other name than murder.

Rosemary Aubert is the author of eleven novels, including the acclaimed Ellis Portal mystery series. Rough Wilderness is her third poetry collection and the second in her series of books of imaginary love poems told in the voices of famous women. Born in Niagara Falls, New York, Rosemary has lived in Toronto for decades and works there as a teacher and literary consultant. Her poems have appeared in some of Canada’s most prestigious literary journals.

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