Every day desperate people at the mercy of smugglers flee conflict zones, crossing the Mediterranean in rickety boats in the hopes of using Greece as the conduit to a better life elsewhere. Thousands perish in the attempt. Those who survive face yet more challenges, for the Greeks themselves, in an economic crisis worse than any in living memory, have neither the resources nor the will to play host to the constant influx of refugees. In The Brink of Freedom we see how worlds collide when a young boy goes missing from a refugee camp in Athens. He is found with a Canadian woman, but the police also apprehend a Gypsy from Ukraine on suspicion of human trafficking. When everyone is desperate, none of the rules of civilized society apply.

Stella Leventoyannis Harvey was born in Cairo, Egypt and moved to Calgary as a child with her family. In 2001, Stella founded the Whistler Writers Group, also known as the Vicious Circle, which each year produces the Whistler Writers Festival under her direction. Stella is a fiction writer whose short stories have appeared in The Literary Leanings Anthology, The New Orphic Review, Emerge Magazine and The Dalhousie Review. Her non-fiction has appeared in Pique Newsmagazine, The Question and the Globe and Mail. She currently lives with her husband in Whistler, but visits her many relatives in Greece often, indulging her love of Greek food and culture and honing her fluency in the language. Her first novel, Nicolai's Daughters was published in 2012 with the Greek translation published by Psichogios Publications of Athens. Her second novel, The Brink of Freedom was published in 2015.

Stella Leventoyannis Harvey's profile page