Housekeeper or whore? A dollybird is either or both in thevocabulary of the prairie west in 1906, leaving the communi-ty to draw its own conclusions about who and what Moira isand isn’t. Determined to find redemption in the midst of their deri-sion and to find joy despite uncertainty, Moira faces impossiblechoices with consequences beyond anything she can imagine. Thrown into the purgatory of a bleak prairie landscape as unforgivingas her mother, twenty-year-old Newfoundlander Moira Burns is cer-tain she will rise above the locals of Ibsen, Saskatchewan. Until thereasons for her flight west become clear. Until she is befriended by aprostitute and courted by a ‘half breed’. Until she becomes the “dolly-bird” of superstitious Irish Catholic homesteader, Dillan Flaherty.Scattered through with birth, death, and the violent potential of bothman and the elements, Dollybirdexcavates the small mercies whichcome to mean more than they should on a prairie peopled withcharacters struggling under a huge sky that waits, not so quietly, forthem to fail.

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