The Better Mother (Knopf $29.95) by Jen Sookfong Lee is about an odd friendship between Miss Val, a longtime burlesque dancer, and Danny Lim, a Vancouver wedding photographer in the early 1980s, when HIV/AIDS was spreading rapidly. The pair met in 1958 when eight-year-old Danny Lim was sent to buy cigarettes for his father, but lost the money. Frantic, he rushed through Chinatown and saw Miss Val behind a nightclub. The burlesque dancer gave him a pack of cigarettes and her silk belt. Before Miss Val became the Siamese Kitten in showbiz, she grew up in an old house on the Fraser River. 978-0-307-39950-2

[BCBW 2011]