MOVING BACK CAN MEAN MOVING FORWARD...AT A PRICE

As card-carrying members of the Sixties counter-culture, seven friends decide to abandon life in the mainstream and move back to the land. Phil and Marina join the unreliable Noah and his ever-changing band of acolytes in living off the grid.

But good intentions meet reality—and passion. The commune quickly splinters, with a hard core of originals staying on the land and the rest heading home to the city.

In a series of linked short stories, The Necessary Havoc of Love follows the old friends and their growing children from the 1970s through to the pandemic. We meet a national radio host, a human rights worker, a computer mogul and a craftswoman. All are restless seekers, looking for love or fleeing its failure. We follow them from an Indian ashram to a coffee plantation in Panama, from Mexico City to Tasmania and back to Vancouver. Along the way, the old friends face decades of change while struggling to stay true to themselves, always asking a central question.

What does it mean to live a worthwhile life?

The first death among the original communards brings the survivors back together in a moving finale. As one of the friends says in her elegy, "It's a cliché, and it's naïve, but it's true: Our generation hoped to make the world a better place." Whether they succeeded—whether any one person can succeed—leaves all of them wrestling with their choices.

Some of the stories have won major awards, while others are new and unpublished. Together, they highlight both the havoc and the necessity of love.