To Amanda Lewis, Diane Martin, Louise Dennys, Marion Garner and Michael Schellenberg, for letting me crash the Knopf and Random House Canada party once again.
To my writing partners, June Hutton and Mary Novik of SPiN, without whom I would be despondent, devoid of ideas and irredeemably grumpy.
To Carolyn Swayze, whose gentle voice and rational advice have become mainstays of my writing life.
To Patricia Kells, for her continued enthusiasm in promoting my books.
To Lissa Cowan, Brendan McLeod and Andrea MacPherson, for commiserating with me over drinks, e-mail and swapped manuscripts.
To my friends at CBC Radio One, in particular Sheila Peacock, Sheryl MacKay, Stephen Quinn, Madeline Green, Jo-Ann Roberts, Ann Jansen, Jacqueline Kirk and Shelagh Rogers, for giving me an excuse to leave the house and reminding me that the world of books is always worth talking about.
To my family, especially my sisters Linda, Pamela, Tina and Emma, for helping me navigate the minefield of working motherhood. And to my niece Madeleine, for cheerfully babysitting a newborn infant while I finished this book, and for showing me the hidden gems of daytime television.
To Troy, Oscar and Molly, for giving me everything.
To the Canada Council for the Arts and its Project Assistance for Creative Writers, for supporting the development of this novel.
I used many sources in the research of The Better Mother, and have listed the ones I turned to again and again whenever I had questions about burlesque, HIV/AIDS or mid-twentieth century Vancouver.
The research of Becki L. Ross, now collected in her comprehensive book Burlesque West: Showgirls, Sex and Sin in Postwar Vancouver.
Fred Herzog, Vancouver Photographs.
Daniel Francis, Red Light Neon: A History of Vancouver’s Sex Trade.
The Age of AIDS, a production of Frontline/WGBH, directed by William Cran.
In 2005, I saw an exhibit of photographs by a Canadian artist named Theodore Saskatche Wan (who changed his middle name to mirror the name of a small town on the Prairies) at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Many of his images moved me, but none moved me as much as his commercial photographs of exotic dancers. Wan died of cancer in 1987 at the age of thirty-three. I found myself ruminating on the fictional possibilities of his story, and soon developed a character named Danny. While Danny isn’t Theodore Wan, I owe a great deal to Wan’s photographs, which began this whole journey in the first place.