D. S. Hartley

All Our Friends D. S. Hartley

All Our Friends: Simple Rewards of Simple Living begins with a couple's choice to quit their jobs and take up a life of voluntary simplicity. When they buy a rustic property on Mayne Island, one of B. C.'s Southern Gulf Islands, they soon find themselves sharing their yard with an extended family of raccoons.

While exploring the adjustments the couple must make to the limitations of living in a travel trailer and on a fixed income, All Our Friends follows their relationship with the raccoons as they move from the background into the foreground of the couple's lives.

First Bandit appears by making a comical assault on the bird feeder. Shortly after his lady friends, Foxy, Raggedy Ann and Putzi, make themselves at home. When Raggedy and Putzi bring their kits in the summer, the yard turns into a 'garden stage'.

All summer long the couple has front row seats to the hilarious comedies of child rearing and the furious dramas of competition for food and territory that are staged on an almost daily basis. In the fall the excitement reaches a climax when first four out of five young, then Bandit and Raggedy, succumb to canine distemper. By October only Putzi and Bugsy, mother and son, remain healthy. Their story begins a new chapter.

Another year brings dramatic changes with increasing development on Mayne Island and the on-again off-again relationship between Putzi and Bugsy. By mid-summer Bugsy is on his own, and two newcomers discover 'Putzi's Place', foreshadowing a repeat of last year's performances.

By letting the reader in on the challenges and rewards of simple living in an island setting, of which close contact with wildlife is the ultimate reward, All Our Friends is an experience few are ever lucky to have.