Calgary writer Marion Douglas has established herself as an eloquent prose stylist with special empathy for marginalized people, mainly lesbians. But her insight and creativity are open and available to any readers who appreciate a finely crafted story.

Douglas’s previous novel, Bending at the Bow, is a searing account of loss; with Magic Eight Ball the emphasis changes to gain. This latest novel starts out with two girls playing with an eight ball to predict the future. But no toy can foresee what happens to one of them, Julia Raine. She grows up, explores her sexuality, and, although she prefers women, finds herself pregnant.

Douglas is sensitive to Julia’s confusion, and provides her character with a role model, Julia’s great-aunt Katherine. The various responses of the family members to Katherine’s long devotion to another woman are realistic, and Katherine herself is a fascinating creation. At the age of 80, she experiences loss acutely. “I’m eighty years old and still I’m wondering if someone might be taking notice of this tragic figure in the graveyard. It’s an odd thing, but there’s some part of the human mind that refuses to accept the reality of its aging body.”

Most of the central characters are female, but Douglas intelligently avoids male-bashing. Julia is one of the least formed of the characters, but she is also one of the youngest, and part of the novel’s charm is its sense of the confusion with which we all move through life. Julia’s occasional blankness, while irritating, is in keeping with her slow maturation and her growing understanding and acceptance of her sexuality.

Establishing normalcy in the face of apparent difference is a feat that Douglas carries off with clear, crisp prose. And while the open ending may not fully satisfy all readers, it’s appropriate, given where Julia is in her life.