At age 12, Bergen already knew he wanted to be a writer. In Grade 7 he entered a school story contest and won the $1 prize. He didn't tell anyone because he felt guilty that he'd actually borrowed the submarine-sinking idea from a 300-page novel and condensed it into five pages. Several days later three older boys rammed him up against a locker and informed him: "You stole that story!" They'd read the novel, too.

This experience gave him long thoughts on how writers beg, borrow and yes, steal, ideas and events from all around us. Is it plagiarism or isn't it? For him, he concluded that fiction was the safest way to write.

Bergen reviewed two books beginning with the award-winning The Time in Between. Its inspiration came from the years he spent in Thailand in the 1980s teaching English to Vietnamese refuges and more recently another from six months in Vietnam. The story is a search on several levels, by an old soldier, Charles Boatman, seeking the truth and absolution for the atrocity he committed during the war, the search by his son and daughter for understanding of what is motivating him, and then finally their search for their father who has disappeared.

The Retreat, with ink barely dry, is already long listed for the Giller Prize. Set in Kenora in the 1970s at a commune overseen by guru Dr. Amos, it's told through the eyes of Lizzie, 17, oldest child of the dysfunctional Byrd family and through the eyes of Raymond Seymour, a young Ojibway from an equally dysfunction background.

Bergen is a master of the small picture, painting details of life that breath character into his many-layered books. Signed copies of both books are available at Crew's Quarters, 192 West Street, Port Colborne.