William Lyon Mackenzie King, Canada’s longest-serving prime minister, hoped to be remembered as “the man who did the most for Canada.” Our most enduring memory of him, however, seems to be as the guy who spoke regularly to spirits. Ottawa writer Lian Goodall’s William Lyon Mackenzie King: Dreams and Shadows, the 19th biography in XYZ’s Quest series, seeks to flesh out that popular image, portraying King as a leader who was as deeply committed to social justice as to spiritualism, as devoted to serving his country as to serving the dead.

Goodall’s text weaves excerpts from King’s correspondence and speeches into his life story, and draws heavily on the diaries he kept all his adult life, incorporating new material that’s recently been made public. This combination of sources, helpfully listed in the book’s bibliography, sheds light on both the public and private aspects of this complex figure.

Goodall – a former interpreter at the Woodside museum in Kitchener, Ontario, King’s boyhood home – submerges herself as storyteller in King’s voice, imagining his thoughts and feelings. While this narrative stance can foster a sense of intimacy with the biographical subject, it also leaves little room for critical examination or historical evaluation, a shortcoming that’s problematic for young readers. In the passages that describe King’s admiration for Hitler, for example, some commentary would have helped put these remarks in context, rather than assuming that young readers understand the implications of King’s words.

Similarly, Goodall presumes too often that readers can follow the story as she leaps ahead in time; more than once I needed the chronology of King’s life – done by historian Lynne Bowen, a member of the editorial board of this series – to fill in puzzling narrative gaps. Closer attention to such details would have made Dreams and Shadows a more comprehensive and accessible portrait of Mackenzie King.