(Reviewed by Anne Miles)

As the title suggests, Deborah Willis’s The Dark and Other Love Stories concerns love in varied (often odd) forms. Each story touches on darkness too. Risky behaviour, criminal acts, actual and potential violence all appear. My favourite in this beautifully written collection is “The Passage Bird”— a nuanced story of the healing friendship between a troubled young girl and an older man.

In other stories I found access to the inner lives of characters quite different from myself. Leanna, a Christian wife and mother, and Eddie, an habitue of Skid Row, both got into my head and my heart, where they’ll stay awhile.

Though the jacket blurb says that Deborah Willis lives in Calgary, many of these stories feature the West Coast. I can tell she’s spent time on Vancouver Island, as well as in Vancouver and surrounding areas.

I can also tell that Willis has done her research regarding place and subject matter. Whether she describes the details of hawking and taxidermy, or the atmosphere of present-day Moscow, everything rings true. She documents her research at the end. Six books about birds, plus a class on raptors, provide background for the two out of 13 stories that include avian characters. By the time I’d finished this book I knew I’d learned something.

Penguin, Canada 2017

ISBN 0670069574

Available in the Gibsons Library