The Necessary Havoc of Love

Seven friends head back to the land — until passions splinter their commune. These award-winning stories follow the seven seekers and their families to India, Panama, Tasmania and Mexico as they search for the lives they want to lead.

As card-carrying members of the Sixties counter-culture, seven friends 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 present. We meet a national radio host, a firefighter, a human rights worker, a tech 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 home 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 final. As one of the friends says in an 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 hope to 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Some of the stories have won major awards, while others are new and unpublished.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 universal quest for love.