Dale Smith leaves journalism to attend a MFA writing program. He gets into several comical conflicts with indifferent professors and politically correct colleagues. He also starts a romance with a pretty dance major and pursues his literary goals when controversy erupts over the literary magazine he edited.
An epic novel of a boy growing up in a religious community and how his intellectual development creates controversy for him and how his unconventional attitude threatens his romance with a beautiful but devout girl.
An epic story of eros, "Dale & Vanessa" is about a young journalism grad student who falls in love with a girl of eighteen. They meet at an ornate movie theatre and have a summer of love before Vanessa has to leave town to attend her elite college. In spite of practical problems, Dale and Vanessa remain lovers. When Dale takes a job at a metro newspaper in the Southwest their romance faces yet another obstacle. Will the two lovers stay together in spite of being apart so often? Will Dale succeed as a newspaperman in the competitive world of journalism? Will Vanessa's dream of becoming an actress complicate their future? These questions and others are explored in this romantic, comic, and poignant novel.
After his lover leaves him, a disheartened Dale Smith drops out of graduate school, departs Iowa, and heads west. His first stop is in Idaho where he finds a temporary job working for a horse trade magazine. Still wounded from his lost love, he conducts a flirtation with the town's Lady Godiva. When he's offered a newspaper job, Dale moves to Spokane, Washington. He begins a lascivious affair with an uninhibited young woman, Fiona Ferguson. But when Fiona wants to make their affair more perverse, Dale has to make a decision whether to descend deeper into the dark world of desire or to return to sexual and psychological stability.
Dale Smith leaves journalism to attend a MFA writing program in a rainy land. There he encounters egomaniacal professors and politically correct colleagues and has several comical conflicts with them. Just when he considers returning to journalism, a visiting writer arrives and offers genuine guidance so he can fulfill his ambitions of becoming a novelist. And Dale, after a having a strange affair with a student-poet, meets a beautiful dance major and they begin a romance that might lead to something even more meaningful.
