Vanilla and Other Stories

M. Wayne Cunningham is a past executive director of the Saskatchewan
Arts Board and the former director of Academic and Career Programs at
East Kootenay Community College.

The 15 pieces in this collection represent 25 years of Jane Dorsey’s
creative output as a short-story writer. She is also a publisher,
teacher, poet, and award-winning novelist who lives and works in
Edmonton.

These stories feature memorable characters who often find themselves in
difficult circumstances. A white woman loses her black lover to his
traditional roots in one story. In the poignant “Time Is the School in
Which We Learn Time Is the Fire in Which We Burn,” a young mother who
is dying of cancer slips in and out of her pre-death experiences in a
most believable and telling way. An older dancer attempts to overcome
her physical injuries and mentor a starry-eyed teen in “The Dancing
Master,” while in “Cows” a spinster who has devoted her life to
taking care of her father feels cheated when he dies of a heart attack
just as she had decided to end his life. The title piece, “Vanilla,”
is a sexually explicit story of a woman who exacts revenge on her
husband through an affair with a lesbian prostitute.

Some of Dorsey’s stories may not be to everyone’s liking, but they
all offer fully realized characters with whom many readers will
empathize.