Full of longing and melancholy, the stories in What You Get at Home find comfort and understanding in the unlikeliest of places. In “The Rocking Chair,” a piece of furniture simultaneously divides a family and heals old wounds. In a small pool of light and her favourite book the narrator in the title story finds a sense of belonging and purpose. In “Chopsticks,” a piano in a personal care home reminds a woman of the sense of wonder and admiration she had for her father as a child. With the power of memory the characters that inhabit What You Get at Home find the strength to carry on when life is at its most challenging.

Dora Dueck is the award-winning author of numerous books, articles, and short stories. Her novel, This Hidden Thing, won the 2010 McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction, and What You Get At Home (Turnstone Press, 2012) won the High Plains Award for Short Stories. Dueck's novella, Mask, was also the winning entry for the 2014 Malahat Review novella contest. Dora grew up in a Mennonite community in Alberta, lived many years in Winnipeg, but currently makes her home in British Columbia.

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Dora Dueck's work is immensely satisfying and dazzling in a way that you often don?t find in fiction today. She takes the time to delve deeply into the souls of the people she writes about, to find the perfect word, phrase, cadence, that will bring to life their journeys toward peace and beauty. Dora is a sage and marvellous writer, and one of Manitoba's best kept secrets.?Sandra Birdsell, author of The Russl?nder

Sandra Birdsell