Toronto is a city of contradictions.

It’s sprawling, diverse, often impersonal—but if you know where to look, it’s also quietly luminous. There are pockets of grace tucked between brutalist architecture and indie cafés. There’s stillness in the hum. There’s history beneath the glass.

When I began writing The Second Coming of Grace, I never considered setting it anywhere else.

This is the city where I lived for nearly 30 years. It’s where I wrestled with big questions—about purpose, belonging, spirituality, grief. It’s where I found my voice. And so it felt only natural that Grace Morgenstern would do the same.

But it’s more than personal geography. Toronto works as a setting for this novel because it mirrors Grace’s internal world: beautiful but fractured, layered with memory, haunted by things left unsaid. It’s a city of reinvention—one where you can lose yourself or find yourself, sometimes in the same afternoon.

Toronto also has a quiet mysticism that often gets overlooked. Not the kind with crystals and incense (though you’ll find that too), but the kind that lives in old bookstores, park benches, second-floor rehearsal studios, and places like Future Bakery—a real café that makes several appearances in the novel.

Setting the story in Canada also felt like a small act of defiance. Too often, Canadian characters are relocated to the U.S. for “marketability.” But Grace is Canadian. Her spirituality is grounded in her city. Her pain, her transformation, her encounters with the unseen—all of it belongs here.

In a world that often wants everything to feel universal, I think there’s power in being particular.

Grace’s story could only have unfolded in Toronto. And I’m proud to share a novel that doesn’t just pass through the city—but breathes in it.

Thanks for reading.