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Parkhurst's bold debut grew out of an inventive "history" of canine linguistics she penned while in college. This wholly fictional "research" paper provided Parkhurst with the basis of what would become The Dogs of Babel. "I think every dog owner has wondered, what is my dog thinking?" she explained to Bookpage. "What do they make of what they observe about my life? I wish it were true that we could talk and find out what they're thinking, but I don't think it's ever going to happen."
This bizarre premise was actually a means for Parkhurst to explore the themes of grief, loss, redemption, and communication that form the emotional core of The Dogs of Babel. In the novel, a linguistics professor named Paul Iverson finds his beloved wife Lexy lying dead beneath a thirty-foot apple tree in their yard. Not knowing whether Lexy slipped from the branches accidentally or willfully plummeted to her death, Paul turns to the sole witness to uncover the secret of Lexy's death. Unfortunately, this witness happens to be Loralei, his pet Rhodesian Ridgeback. Devastated, Paul abandons his job and embarks on a quest to teach his dog speech in order to discover what, exactly, happened to his wife.
The eccentricity of this premise is not lost on the author, who admits, "There's a real issue of getting readers to suspend their belief when your premise is a man who is trying to teach his dog to talk," but said, "My hope is that, as you learn more about Paul and what he's like, it's believable that he might follow this unlikely course."
Thanks to Parkhurst's skillful blend of absurdity and genuine humanity, readers not only bought her outlandish premise but enthusiastically embraced the writer as a significant new talent, Book magazine even named her as a "new writer to watch." The Dogs of Babel received raves from a string of publications including The Los Angeles Times, Esquire, People magazine, Marie Claire, and Entertainment Weekly. Furthermore, the novel helped Parkhurst come to terms with her own tragic loss. "My dog, Chelsea, who died during the time I was writing the book, was certainly an inspiration to me," she told Identity Theory.com. "I think that the experience of living with such a sweet dog is probably what made me want to write about dogs in the first place."
Carolyn Parkhurst followed up her touching smash debut with a novel that is no less insightful, but somewhat more humorous. Lost and Found explores the relationships between seven mismatched couples as they compete in the reality TV show from which the novel takes its name. The fictional show is a global scavenger hunt, and the participants find more than they bargained for as relationships become increasingly strained as the game's stakes grow higher. The book generated more positive notices for Parkhurst. Kirkus Reviews stated that Lost and Found surpasses Parkhurst's critically acclaimed debut, adding that, "Given the high-concept premise, Parkhurst has avoided the pitfall of simply engineering a joyride..." Deserved praise for sure, but what else would anyone expect from the writer of The Dogs of Babel?
"I wrote my first story, 'The Table Family,' when I was three. Actually, I dictated it to my mother. It was about a family of tables (Table was their last name), and they were upset because there was a family of leaves growing in their house, but then they all learned to live together. The story also had self-driving cars, a friendly witch, and a man who had only one eye—all the important plot elements."
"I've had three dogs in my life; their names were Fritzie, Shannon, and Chelsea. My mom and I got Chelsea when I was in college, and she's the one who chose his name, despite the fact that he was a male dog and Chelsea is largely a female name.
"A few years later, when Chelsea had come to live with me, my future husband and I tried for a short time to change his name to Doug, which we thought was more fitting (we were inspired by a 'Far Side' cartoon that shows a man standing on his front lawn next to a sign that says, ‘Beware of Doug.' We also liked the way it sounded: ‘This is my dog, Doug'). We did manage to get him to respond to the new name, but ultimately we decided to go back to the name he'd had since he was a puppy."
"I've spent a lot more time watching game shows than I care to admit. I like the excitement of them, the combination of luck and skill, and the possibility that someone could win something really great. Sad as it may sound, The Price is Right is one of the highlights of my day. Whenever my son hears the theme music, he runs to the TV and points at it with great agitation and excitement."
"I love to travel and to cook, although I haven't had much of a chance to do either one since my son was born."
"I collect masks, which is the inspiration for my character Lexy's career as a mask maker, and the first one I ever got was a Carnival mask I bought in Venice. It's a tall gold feather made of papier-mâché, with the features of a woman's face pressed into it. It's beautiful, but it's about two feet tall, and when I bought it I didn't realize I'd have to carry it through Italy for the next two weeks. I dragged it on trains and buses and planes, and I was terrified I'd damage it. The man at the store had wrapped it in paper, and I was scared to unwrap it while I was traveling, so I didn't know until I got home whether it had made the trip intact. Luckily, it was fine; now it's hanging in my living room."
"I also like to play games and do crossword puzzles. When my husband and I were celebrating our first wedding anniversary, I read that the gift is supposed to be paper, so I spent about a month making a crossword puzzle for him. It's surprisingly hard to do. I filled it with clues and references that only he and I would know about, and on the morning of our anniversary, I made him sit there and fill in the whole thing."
Here is what we know, those of us who can speak to tell a story: On the afternoon of October 24, my wife, Lexy Ransome, climbed to the top of the apple tree in our backyard and fell to her death. There were no witnesses, save our dog, Lorelei; it was a weekday afternoon, and none of our neighbors were at home, sitting in their kitchens with their windows open, to hear whether, in that brief midair moment, my wife cried out or gasped or made no sound at all. None of them were working in their yards, enjoying the last of the warm weather, to see whether her body crumpled before she hit the ground, or whether she tried to right herself in the air, or whether she simply spread her arms open to the sky.
I was in the university library when it happened, doing research for a paper I was working on for an upcoming symposium. I had an evening seminar to teach that night, and if I hadn't called home to tell Lexy something interesting I'd read about a movie she'd been wanting to see, then I might have taught my class, gone out for my weekly beer with my graduate students, and spent a few last hours of normalcy, happily unaware that my yard was full of policemen kneeling in the dirt.
As it was, though, I dialed my home number and a man answered the phone. "Ransome residence," he said.
I paused for a moment, confused. I scanned my mental catalog of male voices, friends and relatives who might possibly be at the house for one reason or another, but I couldn't match any of them to the voice on the other end of the line. I was a bit thrown by the phrase "Ransome residence," as well; my last name is Iverson, and to hear a strange man refer to my house as if only Lexy lived there gave me the strange feeling that I'd somehow, in the course of a day, been written out of my own life's script.
"May I speak to Lexy?" I said finally.
"May I ask who's calling?" the man said.
"This is her husband, Paul. Iverson."
"Mr. Iverson, this is Detective Anthony Stack. I'm going to need you to come home now. There's been an accident."
Apparently Lorelei was the one responsible for summoning the police. As our neighbors returned home from work, one by one, they heard her endless, keening howl coming from our yard. They knew Lorelei, most of them, and were used to hearing her bark, barrel-chested and deep, when she chased birds and squirrels around the yard. But they'd never heard her make a sound like this. Our neighbor to the left, Jim Perasso, was the first to peer over the top of our fence and make the discovery. It was already dark out - the days were getting shorter, and dusk was coming earlier and earlier each day - but as Lorelei ran frantically between the apple tree and the back door of the house, her movements activated our backyard motion-sensor lights. With every circle Lorelei made, she'd pause to nudge Lexy's body with her nose, stopping long enough to allow the lights to go out; then, as she resumed her wild race to each corner of the yard, the lights would go on again. It was through this surreal, strobelike flickering that Jim saw Lexy lying beneath the tree and called 911.
When I arrived, there was police tape marking off the backyard gate, and the man I had spoken to on the phone met me as I walked across the lawn. He introduced himself again and took me to sit in the living room. I followed him dumbly, all my half-questions stalled by the dread that seemed to have stopped the passage of air through my lungs. I guess I knew what was coming. Already, the house felt still and bare, as if it had been emptied of all the living complexity that had been there when I left. Even Lorelei was gone, having been sedated and taken away by animal control for the night.
Detective Stack told me what had happened as I sat there, numb.
"Do you have any idea what your wife might have been doing in the tree?" he asked.
"I don't know," I said. She had never, in the time I had known her, shown any interest in climbing trees, and this one couldn't have been an easy one to start with. The apple tree in our yard is unusually tall, a monster compared to the dwarf varieties you see in orchards and autumn pick-your-own farms. We had neglected it, not pruning it even once in the time we'd lived there, and it had grown to an unruly height of twenty-five or thirty feet. I couldn't begin to guess what she might have been doing up there. Detective Stack was watching me closely. "Maybe she wanted to pick some apples," I said weakly.
"Well, that seems to be the logical answer." He looked at me and at the floor. "It seems pretty clear to us that your wife's death was an accident, but in cases like this when there are no witnesses, we need to do a brief investigation to rule out suicide. I have to ask - did your wife seem at all depressed lately? Did she ever mention suicide, even in a casual way?"
I shook my head.
"I didn't think so," he said. "I just had to ask."
When the men in the yard finished taking their pictures and collecting their evidence, Detective Stack talked to them and reported back to me that everyone was satisfied. It had been an accident, no question. Apparently there are two ways of falling, and each one tells a story. A person who jumps from a great height, even as high as seven or eight floors up, can control the way she falls; if she lands on her feet, she may sustain great injuries to her legs and spine, but she may survive. And if she does not survive, then the particular way her bones break, the way her ankles and knee shatter from the stress of the impact, lets us know that her jump was intentional. But a person who reaches the top branches of an apple tree, twenty-five feet off the ground, and simply loses her footing has no control over how she falls. She may tumble in the air and land on her stomach or her back or her head. She may land with her skin intact and still break every bone and crush every organ inside her. This is how we decide what is an accident and what is not. When they found Lexy, she was lying faceup, and her neck was broken. This is how we know that Lexy didn't jump.
Later, after the police had left and Lexy's body had been taken away, I went out into the yard. Underneath the tree, there was a scattering of apples that had fallen to the ground. Had Lexy climbed the tree to pick the last of the apples before they grew rotten on the branches? Perhaps she was going to bake something; perhaps she was going to put them in a pretty bowl and set them someplace sunny for us to snack on. I gathered them up carefully and brought them inside. I kept them on the kitchen table until the smell of their sweet rot began to draw flies.
It wasn't until a few days after the funeral that I began to find certain clues - well, I hesitate to use the word "clues," which excludes the possibility of sheer coincidence or overanalyzing on my part. To say I found clues would suggest that someone had laid out a careful trail of bits of information with the aim of leading me to a conclusion so well hidden and yet so obvious that its accuracy could not be disputed. I don't expect I'll be that lucky. I'll say instead that I began to discover certain anomalies, certain incongruities, that suggested that the day of Lexy's death had not been a usual day.
The first of these anomalies had to do with our bookshelves. Lexy and I were both big readers, and our bookshelves, like anyone's, I imagine, were halfheartedly organized according to a number of different systems. On some shelves, books were grouped by size, big coffee-table books all together on the bottommost shelf, and mass-market paperbacks crammed in where nothing else would fit. There were enclaves of books grouped by subject - our cookbooks were all on the same shelf, for example - but this type of classification was too painstaking to carry very far. Finally, there were her books and my books - books whose subject matter reflected our own individual interests, and books each of us had owned before we were married that just ended up in their own sections. Beyond that, it was a hodge-podge. Even so, I came to have a sense of which books belonged where. A mental impression that I had seen the novel I had loved when I was twenty sitting snugly between a book of poems we'd received as a wedding gift and a sci-fi thriller I had read on the beach one summer. If you asked me where you might find a particular textbook I coauthored, I could point you right to its place between a Beatles biography and a book about how to brew your own beer. This is how I know that Lexy rearranged the books before she died.
The second anomaly has to do with Lorelei. As far as I can piece together, it seems that Lexy took a steak from the refrigerator, one we'd been planning to barbecue that night on the grill, cooked it, and gave it to the dog. At first I thought she must have eaten it herself and merely given Lorelei the bone to chew on - I found the bone several days later, hidden in a corner of the bedroom - but the thing is, there were no dirty plates or cutlery, only the frying pan sitting on the stove where she left it. The dishwasher was locked, having been run that morning after breakfast, and when I opened it up, I could still recognize my own handiwork in the way the dishes had been negotiated into place. The dishwasher hadn't been touched, the dish rack next to the sink was empty, and the dish towels weren't even moist. I have to conclude that one of two things happened: either Lexy surprised Lorelei with an unprecedented wealth of meat or she stood in our kitchen on the last day of her life and ate an entire twenty-ounce steak with her fingers. As I think about it now, it occurs to me that there might be a third scenario, and it might be the best one of all: perhaps the two of them shared it.
Maybe these events mean nothing. After all, I am a grieving man, and I am trying very hard to find some sense in my wife's death. But the evidence I have discovered is sufficiently strange to make me wonder what really happened that day, whether it was really a desire for apples that led my sweet wife to climb to the top of that tree. Lorelei is my witness, not just to Lexy's death itself but to all the events leading up to it. She watched Lexy move through her days and her nights. She was there for the unfolding of our marriage from its first day to its last. Simply put, she knows things I don't. I feel I must do whatever I can to unlock that knowledge.
Copyright © 2003 by Carolyn Parkhurst
2. Paul and Lexy seem to have extremely different personalities. What characteristics in Paul might have drawn Lexy to him? What, for Paul, were the irresistible elements of Lexy's character? Were there early indications that she had a darker side?
3. What do you make of Paul and Lexy's whirlwind romance and courtship? Do they rush into the relationship too quickly, or does the intensity of their feelings for each other indicate a powerful bond?
4. What kind of clues does Paul find to indicate that Lexy's death had more to it than it seemed? Do you think Lexy deliberately left him a puzzle to piece together?
5. How does making death masks affect Lexy? Despite Paul's fears that it is too morbid a pursuit for her, why does she tell Paul she wants to continue?
6. Lexy creates a death mask for a young girl named Jennifer, who committed suicide. Why do Jennifer's parents reject the first mask Lexy makes? What kind of significance does the mask take on for Lexy?
7. Paul's obsession with the Cerberus Society leads him and Lorelei into a dangerous situation. Why is he so fascinated with this strange group? Is he responsible for Lorelei's abduction?
8. During Paul and Lexy's vacation in New Orleans, Lexy is convinced that she has met the ghost of Blue Marie. Why is this meeting so important to her? What happens when she is led to believe that the woman was not, after all, Blue Marie?
9. Lexy faithfully records her dreams in a dream journal. After her death, Paul hunts through this book searching desperately for answers. What role do dreams play in the book? Do you think they offer a window into a person's psyche? How do Paul's dreams about Lexy reflect how his own grieving process progresses?
10. What is the significance of the verses from Tam Lin that Lexy teaches Paul on pp. 60-1? How does their meaning transform throughout the novel?
Anonymous
Posted November 8, 2005
I don't get it at all. The vast majority of people on this site seem to love this book. Why? Lexy is an extremely self-centered, unlikeable 'heroine' and Paul is a complete dolt whose moronic actions cause horrific consequences for the poor dog, Lorelei. What is there to like in this book? If you're a dog lover or want to get caught up in characters you can actually care about, run, don't walk, away from The Dogs of Babel.
3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
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Posted February 28, 2006
The book starts off fine but as an avid dog lover, I was appalled that someone could even think of dog mutilation as described in detail in the book much less write and publish it. It could have been a lovely story. I'd give it zero stars if I could!!
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Posted February 17, 2006
First of all, why do people feel the need to summarize the book when giving a review... Having said that, being a dog lover, this book was probably the worst book I have ever read. I don't know how some one could possibly come up with something so completely cruel and inhumane. Whose mind works like that? And even more, what publisher thought it was a good idea to publish it? When I finished the book, all I could do was sit in the floor with my girls (dogs) and love them. I was stressed that there was some one out there that could even think of something like this. If there was an option for no stars, I would choose it instead of one star.
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.I bought this book at a local resale shop, thinking the premise sounded interesting. The lead female character Lexy has obviously had psychological problems since her teenage years. She did have an interesting profession, but ultimately I found her character self-centered and exhausting. Then I reached the part starting on the grotesque animal experimentation. I have spent decades trying to eradicate animal abuse of all kinds and if I had known it contained this aspect I would never have started reading it. Because her husband Paul could not admit to himself that his wife committed suicide he embarks on a ridiculous quest to teach his dog to talk, leaving his job, and sinking into depression. Then comes the part about the demented group of men who surgically experiment on dogs thinking they can teach them human language! This aspect of the story made me ill, and I don't care how the book ended, I stopped reading and will probably get rid of it. I would not recommend this book to anyone.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted April 7, 2006
I had high hopes for this book. It kicked off powerfully, but later lost momentum and finally crashed and burned somewhere out in left field. The book is about a man's quest to use his dog to find out the truth about his wife's murder. However, as a dog owner and a woman, I found Parkhurst's portrayals of the wife (Lexy) and the dog (Lorelei) as contrived and outright unbelievable. The author included many flashbacks to describe the dead wife's previous time with the husband. The wife was supposed to have been portrayed as slightly wacky but lovable, but I found her to be selfish and spoiled and not lovable at all. The crux of this novel is to have a shared nostalgia for this dead wife. I disliked her character and therefore cared not about how she died, instead I was confused and annoyed at her husband who was obsessing over her death. The novel ends weakly, when the husband discovers the manner in which the wife died, which was no real surprise. The author has some gift for prose, but no gift for realistic or believable storytelling. I will be trying to get my money back for this book.
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted June 19, 2003
When I read the reviews of this book, I thought it sounded rather strange. I am a dog lover though, so I was also intrigued, so I bought it anyway. I'm so glad I did. The writing is marvelous, the story is compellingly told, and I actually cried. I can't recommend this book highly enough. You won't be sorry!
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted January 29, 2012
Ok,*picks so up*lets bring it to Willowleaf, -Chargerstar
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Posted January 26, 2012
Not believable or enjoyable. I feel like I wasted my time.
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Posted January 29, 2012
Hey guys i found a patch of catmint and i need someone to help carry it. Everpaw
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.This book broke my heart. Broody, introspective and a bit...weird. I love it.
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Posted February 26, 2011
this book is the best its got all the detail in it.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.JagerMeister13
Posted October 5, 2010
I was a little unsure if I'd like this book but I decided to purchase it anyways. I'm so glad I did, it is now my favorite book. You fall in love with the characters and can't stop reading. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves a good book with mystery, heartbreak, and love. After reading this book I'm definitally interested in reading Carolyn Parkhurst's other books, I just hope they can compare. Definitally read this book, you won't be disappointed.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.If you want to read Dogs of Babel after reading Carolyn Parkhurst's latest novel, The Nobodies Album, be prepared for a very different kind of book. Dogs of Babel does not match up to the latest, but it has its own quirky appeal, as it is very offbeat while at the same time a touching story. On the other hand, it's not as good as her latest. Getting better with each novel is a good thing!
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Posted September 10, 2009
I Also Recommend:
As a science fiction scholar and as a lay scholar of linguistics, I was pleased to start reading what I thought was a work of "soft science fiction" -- that is, I thought the novel would focus primarily on the supremely wonderful idea of a linguist's teaching a dog to communicate, for crushingly sad reasons. That misunderstanding was what made me start to read the book.
When I realized I was mistaken, I was too hooked, too emotionally involved, to stop reading.
Let me be clear: I adore every scene in which Paul Iverson tries to teach the Rhodesian Ridgeback, Lorelei, to communicate. These scenes fill me with joy. Iverson (that is to say, Carolyn Parkhurst) has brilliant ideas, which, alas, are more suited to teaching another primate or a deaf child to speak. Lorelei's wonderfully doggie inability to understand what Paul tries to communicate is always delightful and exactly right.
But the central, painful focus is the story of Paul's grief and guilt and search for redemption.
Parkhurst provides genuinely scary moments, and lovely moments of loving, and I wept over all of them. In her word-jokes, in her stories about the creation of masks, in Paul's grieving yet exalted memories of his dead wife, I felt the touch of the numinous sublime, again and again.
I wholeheartedly recommend it to ... well, to everyone. There truly is something for every reader in this marvellous novel.
Reading this book was like getting punched in the gut. The emotion of it - I can't even find words to do it justice.This is a MUST read.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.This is one of the best book I've read in a long time, by far. It's so different, something that makes you think and makes you want to try to piece things together long before you have each pieces. It touches the heart and truly leaves you breathless.
You follow Paul, who just recently lost his wife Lexi in an accident. She fell from a tree in their back yard and the only one who was there to witness it were their dog, Lorelei. After police determine it as an accident, Paul still finds some details a little fishy. What does he do? He intends to teach his dog to speak English in order to tell him what really happened to Lexi.
The book begins normally, just making you assume Paul's a little strange and grief stricken. But soon, it takes a turn that truly makes you believe Paul is absolutely out of his mind, which only gets worse, as you'll see. The chapters are divided between past and present, in some he discusses Lorelei and in others he talks about Lexi and when they first met.
The characters (besides Lorelei) change so much from the beginning of the book to the ending, especially Lexi, who you will gradually see change into a person that is completely opposite from the beginning.
I won't spoil anything but this is definitely one book that will mess with your head and tug at your heart strings and may even make you question the mind of man-kind and question what monstrous things we are truly capable of if we wish it.
Anonymous
Posted May 1, 2008
In Carolyn Parkhurst riveting story, The Dogs of Babel, linguistics professor Paul Iverson tries to figure out if his wife's death was accidental or on purpose. The mystery begins when Paul comes home one day, to find police flocking his house. And as it turns out, their Rhodesian Ridgeback named Lorelei is the only witness to Lexy's, Paul's wife, death. With such things as books in the wrong places on their shelves, and a mysterious phone call, Paul starts to notice something about the weeks leading up to Lexy's death. These hints, may even lead him to figuring out the mystery that has been thrusted upon him. Parkhurst alternates between the present, with Paul and Lorelei, and the past. From when Paul and Lexy first met, in which they go on a week long first date from Virginia to Disney World, eating only appetizers and side dishes along the way. Up until the weeks before her tragic death. She takes you through their meeting, falling in love, and eventually their marriage. Not every marriage is perfect however, and as you get flashes from the past, you begin to realize this ''..for every dark moment we shared between us, there was a moment of such brightness I almost could not bear to look at it head-on.''. The story takes a surprising turn when Paul tries to teach Lorelei to speak. He uses a variety of ways to try to get Lorelei to speak. Lorelei, as Paul knows, is the only one who saw Lexy dies and the only one who knows the truth about it. Paul wants more then anything to find out the truth about Lexy's death. Even going as far as contacting a man in jail who was arrested for doing such unheard of operations on canines. And if you, like Paul, want to know the truth about Lexy's death, you will just have to read through and find out.
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Posted October 8, 2007
I had never read anything from this author before but I will definately be looking for more books. I thought this book was very well done. I thought I would have a problem with the dog mutilation part, but it was more fascinating that anything else. Lex needed some professional help partnered up with some drugs, but even so she made the story what it was. She was sad and confused, just like most of the book. Highly recommended! I had to read this book as soon as every oportunity arrose, even for 5 minutes.
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Posted August 11, 2007
The beautiful prose and the tying up of little details here and there throughout the book made up for the completely unlikeable character of Lexy. When I finished the book, I was breathless, because the writing style was so fluid and there were many clever details (for instance, when Paul dissects other characters' names and forms the letters into different words befitting that character). Like most other reviewers, however, I found Lexy too depressed and wacky to be considered quirky and kooky in a cute way. Why was therapy never suggested to her? Probably because she would've just gone into one of her stupid little maniacal fits, stabbing a book or calling a tv psychic or whatever. And the part about her wearing the mask of a dead girl while making love to her husband? What the hell? Did Paul not know right then and there to get the hell out of there? Because obviously, the only way their marriage was going was toward disaster. However, the part that most readers seem to take offense with, the Cerberus Society (the dog mutilation part), I didn't really mind, and in fact I thought it was somewhat fascinating the way those people were so hardcore about making a dog talk. I had the most problems with Lexy--while I felt sad and laughed at times when I read about their (mis)adventures together, ultimately I became impatient with this character. There seemed to be no proper explanation of the way she was, no childhood background that I can remember reading about to explain it. All that said, this book is worth reading if only for the lovely way the author writes.
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Posted March 8, 2007
This book was very interesting and different. The structure is kind of piecy as the chapters go back and forth, but it keeps your interest because it doesn't talk about the same thing for pages on end. I found myself reading it any chance I got. It was very strange because of the whole getting your dog to realistically talk part, but very interesting because it was so different. Parkhurst writes some things about dogs that a sure to grip every dog lover's heart. Beautiful writing. I loved this book.
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Overview
A poignant and beautiful debut novel explores a man's quest to unravel the mystery of his wife's death with the help of the only witness--their Rhodesian ridgeback, Lorelei.What People Are Saying
Anna Quindlen
Last summer I got this manuscript, I ripped through it in one...