Paulette and Danni grew up miles apart — Paulette in Hamilton and Danni in North Toronto — but they might as well have been worlds apart. Paulette's family emigrated from Jamaica. Danni grew up Jewish in an affluent neighbourhood of Toronto. Now both women find themselves on the streets of Toronto, working in the sex trade.

Paulette is a seasoned prostitute, working to support herself and her addiction. She acts as an unlikely and reluctant mentor and friend to Danni, who is new to the street and whose addiction has set her on a similar path to Paulette. Their paths intersect again and again over the course of a difficult and troubled friendship that sees Paulette begin to pull herself together while Danni manages to survive everything that comes her way. Will her luck run out? Has Paulette learned to make her own luck?

John Miller is the award-winning author of two previous literary novels: The Featherbed (Dundurn, 2002) and A Sharp Intake of Breath (Dundurn, 2007), which won the 2008 Beatrice and Martin Fischer Award in Fiction). Miller was born and resides in Toronto, and currently works as a freelance consultant in non-profit organizational development and in global health.

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It's simply a beautiful book, well-researched, and written with care and sensitivity. Wild and Beautiful is the Night joins a long list of recent novels that aim to humanize, rather than sensationalize, the world of sex work ...