"She got into her car and shut the door. I turned and walked away but could hear her car start and drive away. She was very beautiful, and I knew then that it would be hard. I looked over my shoulder to a dark corner of the sky and realized that it wasn't a good sky at all but was going to rain."

One young man discovers a world outside of himself in Jon-Michael Hamilton's quietly moving debut, "A Shade of Blue."

It's the '90s, an era of fallen heroes and outdated beliefs. Bryan, a typical college student, has just suffered his first heartbreak and is struggling to make sense of a seemingly inconsequential existence.

Bryan's journey takes him further than he ever imagined, through minefields of self-discovery and introspection that eventually lead him into the arms of a woman who may just save him from himself.

A beautifully crafted tale full of the hope and awareness that marked the end of '80s voyeurism and the emergence of social consciousness, "A Shade of Blue" is a powerful testament to the ebb and flow of human awareness.