David Bergen

From the streets of Danang, Vietnam, where a boy falls in with a young American missionary, to fishermen lost on the islands of Honduras, to the Canadian prairies, where an aging rancher finds himself smitten and a teenage boy's infatuation reveals his naiveté, the short stories in Here the Dark chronicle the geographies of both place and heart. Featuring a novella about a young woman torn between faith and doubt in a cloistered Mennonite community,...

When Johnny Fehr, a down-on-his-luck feed supply salesman, thinks about Lorraine, his lover, it's like the Holy Spirit tickling his spine. But Johnny is already married to Charlene. If only he could be a better person and stop hurting the people he loves. In this richly layered novel, David Bergen depicts the small prairie town of Lesser, where everybody's private moments become public knowledge.

Away from the Dead is set in the chaotic times of the Russian revolution, and traces the lives of various characters connected through love and family and loyalty. The novel follows the lives of a bookseller south of Kiev who deserts the army and writes poetry to his lover back home; an adopted Mennonite/Ukrainian peasant who runs with the anarchists only to discover that love and the planting of crops is preferable to killing; and in which a Mennonite...

Born in 1930 in a small town outside Winnipeg, beautiful Hope Koop appears destined to have a conventional life. Church, marriage to a steady young man, children - her fortunes are already laid out for her. This beautifully crafted and perceptive work of fiction spans some fifty years of Hope Koop's life in the second half of the 20th century, from traditionalism to feminism and beyond. David Bergen has created an indelible portrait of a seemingly...

"Bergen's power as a writer pulls like an undertow... An uncanny, discerning, merciful algebra on what love takes, and where it leaves us." - Paige Cooper In Out of Mind, David Bergen delves into the psyche of Lucille Black, mother, grandmother, lover, psychiatrist, and analyst of self, who first appeared in Bergen's bestselling novel The Matter with Morris. Although adept at probing the lives of others, Lucille has become untethered, caught between...

A new novel by the Giller Prize-winning author of "The Time in Between". Set during the summer of the Ojibway occupation of Anicinabe Park in Kenora, "The Retreat" reveals the clash of two cultures as it tells the story of the relationship of two brothers whose lives were separated in childhood, of the complicated love between a white girl and a native boy, and of a family on the verge of splintering forever. Print run 25,000.

These short stories chronicle the geographies of both place and heart.