Author Erin Singer.Carosfootprint/Supplied
While living in Vancouver and working for an online gambling publication, writer Erin Singer flew to the 2007 World Series Poker Tournament in Las Vegas to interview poker players. One of those players would become her husband. What followed was a “whirlwind thing” and three months later, she moved to the city permanently. They’re still together. “It’s wild,” says Singer. “I look back on myself and I think, ‘I can’t believe I did that.’”
If that sounds like a quintessential Sin City quickie courtship, the same can’t be said for Kurt and Eugenie, the fiftysomething love interests of Singer’s debut novel, Dangerland!, released last month. Living among the gaudy and sumptuous backdrop of Las Vegas, the “perpetually bumbling” Kurt and Eugenie have spent a lifetime orbiting each other, all while marrying other people, raising complicated children and making generally questionable life choices. Now, the two must decide, so says the book’s promotional copy, “whether love is worth one more gamble.”
It’s a “will-they or won’t-they” in the truest sense. Singer traces the story of real estate developer Kurt, who’s been infatuated with Eugenie since they were kids. Now twice divorced with four demanding children, Kurt is being sued by his own neighbours and hasn’t spoken to Eugenie in a decade. But that doesn’t stop him from deciding it’s the perfect time to profess his love for her, one last time. Adult children enter the scene, chaos ensues and an ensemble of other Las Vegans – each searching for their own brand of salvation– complicate things further. It’s the kind of story that only benefits from two middle-aged protagonists, who bring what some people may refer to as “baggage,” but Singer believes is the appropriate amount of depth, history and bad decisions, to the narrative. “There’s a lot more to dig into there,” she says.
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What could have been a story derailed by its own messiness is ultimately a light-hearted read with “a lot of substance to it,” Singer says. No spoilers, but the original ending to Dangerland! was far bleaker. Singer’s editor suggested she end the romantic dramedy on a more hopeful note.
“I was like, ‘okay, I’m not opposed to the idea.’ And I wrote it, and it just felt like it was the right move,” says Singer. After all, in Vegas, there’s always one more chance to win.
Dangerland!’s setting – the tiki bars and neon-lit casinos and sprawling gated compounds – is a character unto itself. But if Kurt and Eugenie are deeply rooted in the urban desert, Singer can’t say the same, even though she has called Las Vegas home for nearly 20 years. Having grown up in Northwest Saskatchewan, where her family still lives, Singer still feels like an outsider in her adopted hometown. Most of her writing (she is the recipient of a PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers) has consisted of short fiction set in rural Saskatchewan. Recently, while walking through a large shopping mall in Las Vegas she was startled when a retailer called out to her from behind his kiosk to ask if she was from Canada. She concedes it may have been a coincidence; most malls in Las Vegas do attract a certain proportion of Canadian tourists. But it left her wondering if he – if everyone – can somehow tell her heart is still on the Canadian prairies.
“Vegas is weird because people get very territorial about it. Eugenie says Las Vegas is like the White House. It belongs to you and to me. It belongs to everyone, because everyone has a claim on it. But writers are very strangely territorial about this too. People will even ask you, ‘How long have you been in the writing community? How long have you lived here? Like, have you paid your dues?’ That’s the feeling I get anyway.”
And yet, it’s possible that slight dissonance is the very thing that makes Dangerland! as quirky and vivid as the Las Vegas Strip itself: Maybe Singer is more observant because she doesn’t take her day-to-day setting for granted.
“Even though I live here, I feel like I’m always just seeing it and noticing it,” says Singer.
In her own way, she’s hit the jackpot.