Book excerpt: These eight stories are about the relationships and interactions of ordinary, but interesting, people who find themselves in unusual situations within a recent actual historical context. In some a character confronts, interprets, or comes to terms with, the present by reflecting on the past. Most of the settings are on Vancouver Island -- Nanaimo, the Cowichan Valley, the West Coast -- and feature characters in action, in engagement with their environment. "The Night Tony Shot the Lights Out" three WWII veterans find coming home to be a difficult adjustment. "My Former Yugoslavia" in 1963 a young man travels on foot to a remote village in Bosnia to try to find the estranged sister of a friend in Duncan. "Annie Crook" a woman, age 90, contemplates her life of solitude, with reflections of her childhood and living in hardship in a coal camp 75 years earlier. "Rhymes With Love"; a 60-something white man and a 40-something Chinese woman find themselves living together temporarily in the same house. The inevitable relationship ensues, which is complicated by the fact that she is the daughter of his former lover. "That Good Cahors Wine"; a man walks into the wilderness alone on an overnight pilgrimage to see Canada's highest waterfall. "The Shed" a story of dying man's reconciliation with his former best friend whom he has blamed for a betrayal as the result of a love triangle. "Short Haul"; in a chance encounter, a man finds he is sitting in a barber shop with his childhood hockey hero. "The Interlude"; A businessman befriends an alcoholic street person and finds that they have something in common -- not enough, however, to prevent a sad ending.