The Necessary Havoc of Love

MOVING BACK CAN MEAN MOVING FORWARD…AT A PRICEAs 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all of them wrestling with their choices.Some of the stories have won major awards, while others are new and unpublished.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. Lesley Krueger is an award-winning novelist and filmmaker. Her latest novel, Far Creek Road, will be published by ECW Press this coming October. Set in the early 1960s, the book follows Tink Parker, an adventurous, nosy and very funny nine-year-old living a happy suburban life. But the Cold War is slowly building toward the Cuban Missile Crisis. The world is in danger of ending -- and Tink's innocence comes under threat.According to Sheila Murray, author of Finding Edward, "With the charming and very funny nine-year-old Tink, Krueger has created an unforgettable character whose innocent curiosity busts through the societal conventions of early 1960s Canada. This is a masterful depiction of an atmosphere tense with fear and fuelled by grown-up transgressions, where adult morality is contaminated by politics that tear communities apart."Lesley's previous novel, Time Squared, was published in 2021. Says critic Kerry Clare, "I'll dive right in and tell you that the novel, Time Squared by Lesley Krueger, which I've loved more than I've loved than any book I've read in ages, could be billed as Kate Atkinson's Life After Life meets Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, if we wanted to underline just how badly you really ought to read it. And oh, you really do."Lesley has written four other novels, two short story collections, a travel memoir and a children's book.She was born in Vancouver, Canada and after living in Boston, Mass., London, England, Rio de Janeiro and Mexico City, she makes her home in Toronto. There she writes fiction, works on films, and plays hockey in a couple of women's beer leagues, at least when her ankle isn't broken.