Adult Canadians know how the story of Jeff Healey ends: the award-winning blues and jazz musician succumbed to cancer in 2008, at the age of 41. That Healey died too young goes without saying. But, as the delicately balanced narrative of Cindy Watson’s biography points out, this tragic passing could have occurred much, much earlier. Healey was blind for most of his life; the cause of his blindness, retinoblastoma, or eye cancer, was diagnosed when he was less than a year old. (His adoptive parents made the urgent, and technically illegal, decision to have his left eye removed.)

It’s almost unfortunate that Out of Darkness is aimed at teens, as it will also reward parents. It is a richly detailed overview of Healey’s life, assembled from interviews with friends and family. Though Watson’s breezy narrative voice makes for a quick, immersive read, there are times when the soft-touch editorializing goes a bit far – for example, implying that “the sun suddenly seem[ed] to shine brighter” on the day his adopted parents drove to Children’s Aid to meet Jeff for the first time. (The sunshine motif appears again in the book’s final pages, when it is mentioned that the sun was not out on the day Healey died.)

Perhaps the most significant challenge Watson faces is that her young audience is likely unaware that Healey even existed. She wisely, and fairly, turns his story into a ­triumph-­over-adversity tale. Wisely, because children require positivity and, where applicable, reassurance. Fairly, because Healey’s story was, more than anything else, a triumph.