Although Dorothea Dreams may well be Charnas's best novel, it is unlikely to reach so large a public as did Walk to the End of the World (1974), Motherlines (1980), or The Vampire Tapestry. Between feminists, science-fiction fans, and devotees of horror fiction, these three novels had fairly large built-in audiences. Dorothea Dreams, however, although it contains elements of both feminist thought and fantasy, uses them with considerable restraint. Indeed, it is not until the novel's last chapter that there is proof that the ghost who has been haunting Dorothea is real and not simply a figment of what might be an overactive artistic imagination.