Margaret Stickney (Bienert) has earned a Master of Library Science degree from The University of Toronto and holds a Masters of Arts in English Literature from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. She has worked in several research and administrative positions. She and her husband live in Hamilton, Ontario, and have two daughters and a golden retriever.

The poems presented in this collection reflect several aspects of the author's experience and reflection. In many of the poems, she is concerned with the manner in which the life of the spirit influences perception, emotion and intellect. Memory, imagination and insight serve to bridge the gap between the 'far' and 'near.' These, along with the familial love and religious faith are the author's touchstones in finding, through the vagaries of emotion and experience, the needed "answers to the dark."