Mia Reeves

Mia Chen is an emergency department physician at Vancouver General Hospital. She works 60% of the time, which is a reduction from residency, and she spends her Saturday mornings at the Trout Lake Farmers Market when she's not on shift. She has been doing this for four years—ever since she moved to Grandview-Woodland, ever since the thing with Jonah ended. Jonah Reeves runs Reeves & Root Urban Farm in Strathcona. He sells produce at the farmers market on Saturday mornings. He has been doing this for four years—ever since Mia told him she needed a pause, a bracket, a temporary arrangement, and then the pause never ended. On an October morning at the market, Mia sees the sign: Reeves & Root Urban Farm. She almost keeps walking. She doesn't. *The Vancouver Clause* is literary fiction about two people who loved each other, paused, and didn't quite find the words to say what the pause was actually covering. It follows Mia and Jonah through an autumn and early winter in Vancouver—the season when the city stops performing and becomes itself: grey and specific and more beautiful for it. The novel unfolds across four acts: The Farmers Market (the first accidental encounter, the specific problem of a shared city, the awkwardness of people who used to know each other well); The Professional Overlap (she works at VGH, he works with hospitals on urban farming programs, their lives keep intersecting); The Conversation They Should Have Had (what Mia actually said four years ago, what she meant, what they both know now); and The Vancouver Clause (the question of what temporary was always covering, and whether some arrangements are only temporary until they're not). Mia is not a conventional romance protagonist. She is deliberate, analytical, a person who made a decision four years ago because she thought it was the right decision and has never been sure whether she was right. She approaches the market encounter the way she approaches everything: by assessing the situation, understan