Vanilla, and Other Stories — Candas Jane Dorsey

In Dorsey's distinctive spare prose, these polished gems of prairie realism and surrealism lay bare and minutely examine individuals' relationships to themselves, each other, and the landscape through which they move -- a landscape that is at once powerful, strange and strangely familiar. In sharp contrast to the raw and sometimes harsh realities depicted, Dorsey's stories are couched in beautiful, lucent language that is cumulatively lyrical and relentless.