astonishing and compelling novel about a child abduction

“At times very funny, at times horrific and at times so sad, this novel will make you think hard about what it means to be a family and how far one can travel on the rocky road to forgiveness without completely falling apart.”–Audrey Thomas, final judge.

This novel begins at a fair on a hot August day in 1971 in Hope, BC. Sage and Della Howard are driving to Fernie to start a job and begin a new life. They stop for a break, lose their dog and in the search find a crying toddler in the nearby woods instead; and just as unexpectedly are back on the road continuing their journey with her. As the story unfolds and years pass, the Howards keep their dark secret and raise Stacey as their own. A compelling and original story, with fascinating characters, well-paced, that takes you to the other side of happenstance and fear.

Bill Stenson is a fiction writer born in Nelson, BC. He didn't live there long. He has had stories published in many of Canada's fine line of literary magazines and has a short story collection titled Translating Women and a novel titled Svoboda, both with Thistledown Press. Fiction is his main interest, but he reads a fair amount of poetry and he loves memoirs. He was head cook and bottle washer at CanadianMemoirs.com for years where he was privileged to interview many of North America's finest memoirists. He has a book in electronic form called Memoir Writing for Smart People available for download. Stenson co-founded The Claremont Review, an international literary magazine that publishes young-adult writers aged 13 to 19. He worked for the magazine as an editor for more than twenty years and is proud that this magazine is still alive and well to this day. Bill Stenson lives in Victoria, B.C. with his wife poet Susan Stenson.

Bill Stenson's profile page

Ordinary Strangers is a beautifully written and imagined novel about children and parents and love both blossoming and in peril…the characters are captivating, and the plot is surprising and jarring, while the landscapes of small town BC are so vivid and natural.

John Lent, author of The Path to Ardroe

"At times very funny, at times horrific and at times so sad, this novel will make you think hard about what it means to be a family and how far one can travel on the rocky road to forgiveness without completely falling apart.

Audrey Thomas, author of Local Customs

Never, since Jack Hodgins made mirth and myth out of lumberjacks, has Settler Coast culture been so accurately rendered. Della, Sage and their cohort are ordinary, they are strange, but strangely sympathetic as they collide with one another and with fate, like toys in a sandbox. Humour and wisdom flesh out their liturgy of lies, a web these Ordinary Strangers spin around a stolen child in this tragic-comic thriller.

Linda Rogers, author of Crow Jazz