Lorna Jackson's characters earn every scrap of comfort they get, sexual and otherwise. In the title story of Dressing for Hope, a bar singer finds her "future is getting crowded" when two ex-lovers turn up at the Hope Hotel to catch her gig, a third is on his way, and #2 gives her a phone message from #4. From the tiny stage, she notices the Harley women. "I admire how every step and glance is a sexual act. Their nail polish is libido. They wear tri-coloured rosebud tattoos in places I barely wash. They are as alert as I am to the mood of the room and pass through." "Round River" uses Paul Bunyan yarns to ease communication among a newcomer to a BC logging town, her lumberman lover Duff, and his very attractive 20-year-old son. Her deeply rooted inner conflicts almost sour the three-way relationship. But Duff finds the centre of peace and understanding for them all in a metaphor of work. "My father used to say, 'Hand-falling trees was so quiet,' but I've done it, too, and I know there's no difference. ... The bounce of timber hitting dirt is loud no matter how it was cut or who cut it."

Lorna Jackson spent nine years as a musician on the bar circuit in British Columbia before settling on Southern Vancouver Island. She has been a columnist for Quill and Quire magazine, a contributor to the Georgia Straight, and serves on the editorial board of Malahat Review. She is the author of the acclaimed story collection, Dressing for Hope, and her writing has appeared in such magazines as Brick, The Fiddlehead, The New Quarterly, and Canadian Fiction Magazine. She teaches in the Department of Writing at the University of Victoria and lives in Metchosin.

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"A whip-smart joyride."

Mark Anthony Jarman

"D.H. Lawrence would recognize the force under these stories, and Jackson taps into that force."

Kent Thompson