In Dorothea L. Gordon’s first book When Life Has Other Plans … Discover the Hidden Gifts, the German-born and Canadian-tamed author explored the adjustments she lived through as a 28-year-old Bavarian transplanted by love to Canada’s Pacific Northwest Coast. 

In Daring Decisions, Gordon’s main character has made a similar life-changing trek from Europe, landing in Oak Bay, where she lives with one of her two daughters. Lotti Seidel is independent, smart, and approaching 60, still looking for her future love and unequipped to relinquish her past. 

“I’m in the September part of my life now,” says Lotti in the book. “Not quite as hot as I was a few years ago, but still warm enough for the people I love.”

But something’s missing. Is it Joe, the father of her children and the now-divorced yang to her suddenly-solo yin?

Twenty years into a loving and seemingly solid partnership, Joe has been dispatched from the matrimonial home after Lotti discovers the duality of his sex life: Joe is having sexual affairs with men. It doesn’t go over well.

But as the reader turns the pages, they detect a wave of understanding slowly washing over Lotti’s anger and denial, as she bounces from wooer to wooer, each unwittingly compared with Joe.

“The book is very dear to my heart, because it gave me an opportunity to bring out the subject of bisexuality, and the pain that can be caused by dishonesty,” Gordon says over the phone from the Comox Valley where she lives when she isn’t staying at her downtown Victoria home. “But also the possibility of accepting that a person is bisexual and allowing that to unfold.”

Not biographical but does borrow from Gordon’s life 

Gordon drew on many life experiences to delve into the world of bisexuality, homosexuality, and polyamorous relationships. She didn’t have to go far. Her daughter, she says, hung around wonderful people whose company she enjoyed, who just happened to be gay. 

“Then I met my husband. And then he confessed that he was bisexual,” she says. “But he was very honest about it.” Gordon’s relationship with her husband has evolved and thrived and has helped her to understand the complexities involved in what often are secretive relationships.

“And what it's like for a bisexual man who has a feminine side and a masculine side,” she says.

“It’s the feminine side that makes them go towards a woman because that's where they identify, whereas the masculine side then goes for the man. They're actually two spirits,” she says, in reference to the 2S—in LGBTQ2S. “Those are the 2 Spirits that live in a bisexual man's chest, and he has to see how he can arrange that to his and everybody else's satisfaction.” 

‍Brokeback movie planted a seed

Gordon watched Brokeback Mountain, the critically acclaimed 2005 film depicting a complex romantic relationship between two American cowboys, and it stuck with her.

“What resonated most with me was the pain that the woman suffered when she saw her husband kiss his fishing partner, and how the fact that she knew what was going on broke up their marriage,” she says.

Gordon was fascinated with the situation from the woman’s point of view, and from the perspective of being left behind like the female partners in the movie.

She later met a woman from another country struggling with a husband who touched her on their wedding night but had not since. It turned out the woman’s husband was gay or bisexual, she says, and her role was simply to keep up appearances.

“And so I thought, I wonder, you know, how many women are out there who are in a similar position, and who can't see what's happening under her nose.”

‍Vancouver Island is prominent 

‍Daring Decisions is a story of love, fear, guilt, and acceptance. It’s an affair of the heart with real bruises and aspired healing. Its author has splashed a lot of Vancouver Island in it as she tells the story of Lotti, a handwriting expert whose longtime love has taken up with another man, and due to familial circumstances, has returned to her orbit.

Gordon’s love for romantic European centres, such as Florence and Vienna, takes the reader along on these visits and her exquisitely described citations of Oak Bay, Dallas Road, the Butchart Gardens, and Tofino—the scene of much steaminess with Lotti and lover extraordinaire Mauro—allow the reader to identify geographically with every beautiful Victoria landmark she cites. The book's cover showcases the legislature and Victoria's quaint skyline.

Throughout the novel we meet a succession of would-be lovers—Lotti is not short on suitors.

“I personally think there’s often a purpose for meeting someone, and the purpose is to learn something through them,” Lotti says, mid-book. “Right now, I’m learning that sex with a skilled lover is an elixir for my body. Who knows what I’ll learn farther down the road?”

That road is a smexy pathway of growth and affirmation, with Lotti juggling a busy personal life while her handwriting expertise as a questioned documents examiner is in high demand.

“I thought I'd bring that in because I don't know of any other book where the protagonist is a handwriting expert,” she says.

‍Gordon is already onto Lotti’s next adventure

Gordon, a former teacher who speaks four languages, operated a handwriting analysis business in Gordon Head in the 1980s. She began writing Daring Decisions in 2022 and finished almost exactly a year ago, but a broken wrist and a bout with COVID shelved the book’s promotion.

She is already 25K words into her next novel, the sequel Unseen Forces, where we will find Lotti and Joe exploring new pathways in their careers—and no doubt, each other—Lotti as a handwriting expert but also a communicator with the dead, and Joe as a doctor turned energy healer.

Gordon also promises the unabashedly virile Mauro will make an appearance. “He was just a tool to bring back Lotti’s sexuality,” Gordon says.

‍Daring Decisions is available for purchase at local bookstores such as Bolen Books, Russell Books, Ivy's Bookshop in Oak Bay, and Amazon/Kindle, and can be ordered by emailing books@dlgordon.ca