The stories in The Beauty Box are traditional in the way they offer familiar settings, events, and characters, or the way Dunlop’s quiet voice directs our attention; however, they evolve beyond tradition in the controlled, purposeful way that Dunlop’s details are measured. Her appreciation for minutiae whether it be the meticulous attention to dress expressed by a gay bachelor, or the ritual motions of snakes in a well house create indelible moments, and lead the reader into Dunlop’s character’s fortunes.

Dunlop is at home in several genres — fiction, poetry and memoir. She is the author of two short story collections, The Beauty Box, winner of the Saskatchewan First Book Award (2004), and later her second collection Carnival Glass (2008) which was also nominated for a SBA. Dunlop lives under the endless skies of Swift Current Saskatchewan, but shares an affinity with the Peace River area of Alberta. As she tells it, her uncle moved to the Peace River country from Saskatchewan in the dirty thirties. Trips to the Peace River country loom large in her childhood memories although, in reality, “how many times would my entire family drive 18 hours on less than stellar roads for a visit?” When her uncle died, his roots deep in the Peace, there was a clipping in his effects titled “Raft Baby of the Peace River.” Her cousin sent her the clipping and suggested it would make a great novel. She read the clipping and set it aside for ‘’sometime later.” That sometime later is now.

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