Welfare Wednesdays by Chris Walter

Jack met Lucy, and then it all went bad… Vancouver’s drug-ravaged Downtown Eastside becomes more bearable for Jack Offley and Lucy Blanchard when they meet by chance one sunny afternoon. With Jack’s help, Lucy escapes her abusive common-in-law husband, but the young lovers soon become caught up in the nightmare of drug addiction and find themselves homeless. Stumbling along day by day, Jack and Lucy live only for the last Wednesday of every month, when the welfare checks are issued. Horrifying but darkly comic, Welfare Wednesdays is a love story like no other, a blistering tale of hope but perhaps not exactly redemption.