In the complicated trio of Tomas the fishmonger, Marta the intellectual, and Josef the shady narrator involved in something dark and unsaid, Sean ThomasDougherty fashions a series of intertwined noir chapters that draw on real and imagined Eastern European history. In The Blue City, characters weave in and out of mythical cities based on colors that cut across time and space, as they seek to understand the many avenues that inhabit us both outside and within. Part Calvino, part Jàbes, this brief experimental novella challenges notions of the genre, as its characters search for meaning and redemption in their own lives, as the past intrudes into the present, and what was done or not done, will destroy them or be forgiven.