P.W. Bridgman's fictional writing explores universal themes of forgiveness and redemption, of love and loss, of hope and hopelessness and darkness and light. The author is concerned – as are so many of us – with the lineaments and poetic chiaroscuro of seemingly ordinary lives. Set mainly in Canada, Ireland and England, the stories that comprise Standing at an Angle to My Age cut across broad expanses of time, space, culture and circumstance. An aging pensioner in a Northern Ireland town suffers from dementia. During a fleeting and poignant moment of unexpected lucidity, he reveals a sharp awareness of the human decency for which he is indebted. Its source gives a turn to the less discerning members of the family that had taken him in years before. A 13-year-old girl in Timmins, Ontario is forced by tragic circumstances to grow up too quickly as she watches the man she believed was her father learn a painful lesson at a time when it is too late for him to profit by it. A precocious youth on the brink of adulthood pursues an amateurish quest for Eastern mystical truth and discovers – unexpectedly, in a middle-aged co-worker at a Vancouver Island corner grocery – a quietly inspiring example of Siddhartha-like wisdom. So it goes in these works of short fiction, half of which have not been previously published and the remainder of which have won competitions and appeared in literary magazines and anthologies published in Canada, England, Ireland and Scotland.