When their folk rock group, Hearts of Flame, breaks up, Ruby and the other members gravitate from Alberta to Toronto. The booming city at the end of the eighties invites them to its heart. Ruby starts a fashion business. Blair, a single mother of a fearful child called Simplicity, begins to work in radio. When Ruby disappears, the members of Hearts of Flame are drawn together again. The police investigate her married lover, but fail to turn up any leads. From the glass towers of Toronto’s business elite to the ravines haunted by the city’s street people, Blair searches, and finds only questions. Portrait of a city and a generation at a crossroads, Hearts of Flame looks at the booming eighties in Canada’s largest city, the relationships that animated it, and the secrets even old friends and lovers keep from one another.
By Katherine Govier
