There’s a quietness at the heart of One Foot in Heaven, the first collection of short stories from veterinary professor and poet David Waltner-Toews. Given the subject matter – Prairie-dwelling Mennonites – the sense of calm seems somehow appropriate.

Waltner-Toews stumbles a bit out of the blocks with “Wild Geese,” in which Prom Koslowski, a Ukrainian Mennonite soon to become an orphan of the Russian Revolution, is introduced. Prom’s childhood trauma should be heartbreaking, but a stilted structure and choppy narrative distract the reader. By the second story, the writing has settled into a more comfortable cadence. Prom has grown from orphan to widower, and settled in Canada with his young twins, Sarah and Thomas. The 14 stories progress chronologically through the lives of the Koslowskis and various friends and acquaintances, jumping perspective from character to character.

As is often the case with ensemble pieces, though, one of the supporting cast steals the show. “Getting Saved,” “Catechism,” and “The Desires of the Spirit” present Abner Dueck, a 12-year-old already attempting to strike the balance between body and spirit. The three stories – the best in the bunch – take the reader through Abner’s (and also Sarah’s and Thomas’s) teen years. A hormone-charged but faithful Mennonite boy who just wants some answers, Abner spends his time alternately lusting after Sarah and his “exotic” Jewish classmate Jael Freed, and salvation.

Waltner-Toews effectively presents the struggle to reconcile religion with reality through Abner, and to a lesser extent Thomas. He doesn’t fare as well with the women, however, leaving Sarah a mystery until she is well into her thirties, and giving only the shallowest of depths to Jael, despite her many appearances in the stories.

The short story can be very limiting, and Waltner-Toews has created a few characters and storylines that could greatly benefit from more room to develop and breathe. But taken as a whole, the strengths of the majority of the stories make up for the deficiencies of the few.