Alberta-based former oilman Wade Bell crafts vivid emotional and geographic terrains in his latest short-fiction collection, No Place Fit for a Child. The seeming permanence of nature in the face of human failings is a recurring motif in these stories, which are set in locations ranging from the Yukon to the historic Andalusian city of Granada.

Bell showcases a set of predominantly male protagonists struggling to understand their changing place in society. In some cases, drink and desperation are the modi operandi, as in “The Three-Cornered House,” the portrait of a Toronto family in the process of disintegration. The age of the gin-swilling father is eventually revealed as 43, but he seems decades older. Elderly coupledom is examined in close detail in “Monologue with…” In this case, the husband is a Second World War vet constantly belittled by his wife, Margie, a failed Rimbaud scholar. Bernie’s few pleasures in life involve spiking his tea with scotch and waving at the sex workers across the street. The story subtly conveys the mutual affection that can underlie ceaseless bickering.

Some of Bell’s characters battle elements that are external as well as internal. In the historical fiction “Dead Horse Lake,” a homesteader and his pregnant wife drive through a tornado. A refugee from Cuba who has managed to reach the Yukon barely staves off madness while hiding out in a rat-infested shack in “Pain.” A number of these stories employ a selectively omniscient point of view, with the dominant perspective unexpectedly interrupted by another character’s thoughts. The effect can be disorienting.

The most affecting stories eschew plot mechanics in favour of an amplification of the sense of place and its impact on characters’ drives and identities. For instance, the opening story, “Mountains and Rivers and an Arctic Sea,” describes the thought processes of a young boy who assists his father ferrying passengers across a glacial Rocky Mountain lake in 1949. Bell creates something eerie and atmospheric here, elevating the water and mountains beyond their status as expected CanLit motifs.