"The Kissing Man" is a classic short story sequence of eleven, set in southwestern Ontario in the middle of the twentieth century. The rural setting is real and recognizable: the dry-goods store, the Queen's Hotel, the mill-pond, the axe-handle factory, the Anglican cemetery, and the barber shop. The stories are other-worldly fables or fairy tales, mixing the everyday with the extraordinary and the mundane with the marvellous. The 'kissing man' appears mysteriously and transforms the lives of the lonely. He doesn't cure them of their fear or need but he provides small moments of solace with his compassion and understanding.