Five-Dog Epiphany: How a Quintet of Badass Bichons Retrieved Our Joy

by Marianne Leone

Overview

A new installment in best-selling author Ann Hood’s Gracie Belle imprint, actress Marianne Leone’s (The Sopranos, etc.) memoir explores how a bereaved couple and a pack of rescue dogs rediscovered joy

IN FIVE-DOG EPIPHANY, MARIANNE LEONE writes about the joy that can be summoned after a great loss, "when you look into the eyes of another damaged creature and know that your happiness is a mirror and an echo and a prayer, and that the little soul reflecting all that energy is happy too, at last." This memoir is a moving and sometimes surprisingly funny exploration of grief and the mutual healing that can occur between rescue dogs and people who have experienced a soul-crushing loss. Leone and her husband, actor Chris Cooper, lost their only child suddenly in 2005. Jesse was seventeen, a straight-A student, and a brilliant poet, who was also quadriplegic and nonverbal except with the assistance of a computer.

When six-year-old Jesse miraculously blurted "dog" to Santa, Goody appeared on his bed on Christmas morning. Goody was followed by Lucky, Frenchy, Titi, and Sugar, all rescues adopted after Jesse’s passing. After Jesse’s death, Leone grew a tumor the size of her premature son at birth, her husband disappeared into dark acting roles (Breach, Married Life), and Leone fainted during the filming of a scene in The Sopranos where she is standing in front of her television son’s coffin.

This is the story of a bereaved couple and a pack of rescue dogs finding their way to a new life, everyone licking their wounds, both corporal and spiritual, and the rediscovery of joy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781636141923
Publisher:	Akashic Books, Ltd.
Publication date:	09/03/2024
Pages:	232
Sales rank:	244,714
Product dimensions:	8.40(w) x 5.40(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

MARIANNE LEONE is an actress, screenwriter, and essayist. Her essays have appeared in the Boston Globe, Lit Hub, Ploughshares, Post Road, Bark Magazine, Coastal Living, Solstice, and elsewhere. She is the author of two memoirs, Jesse and Ma Speaks Up. She had a recurring role on HBO’s The Sopranos as Joanne Moltisanti, Christopher’s mother. She has also appeared in films by David O. Russell, Larry David, John Sayles, Nancy Savoca, and Martin Scorsese.

Editorial Reviews

07/22/2024

Sopranos actor Leone (Knowing Jesse) shares in this moving memoir how she and her husband, actor Chris Cooper, began recovering from the death of their teenage son. In 2005, Leone and Cooper’s 17-year-old son, Jesse—who suffered a cerebral hemorrhage after his birth that left him permanently disabled—died in his sleep. Devastated, the couple found solace in caring for Jesse’s pet bichon frise, Goody, until Goody died of heart failure a few months later, on the eve of an operation to remove a cancerous tumor from Leone’s abdomen. To celebrate Leone’s clean bill of health following that procedure, she and Cooper adopted two bichons from a shelter. The dogs had been so badly abused that they hardly allowed the couple to touch them. Gradually, however, Leone and Cooper broke through the canines’ defenses, finding that the process helped repair their spirits after Jesse’s death. Eventually, they adopted two more bichons. In lyrical prose, Leone captures “the feeling that comes when you look into the eyes of another damaged creature and know that your happiness is a mirror and an echo and a prayer.” Readers mourning their own losses will find comfort in these pages. Photos. (Sept.)Correction: A previous version of this review misdescribed the cause of Goody’s death and the nature of Leone’s operation.

Publishers Weekly

"Marianne Leone’s exploration of grief after the loss of her son offers powerful truths that have no offensive sugarcoating and are hard won by her and her husband, Chris Cooper. Dogs populate this story, and I loved getting to know them all, but the book is really about Leone and about her heart and her life and her memory and her grief and her love. I would read her writing about anything, due to her brilliance and sense of humor on any topic."

Rob Delaney

"While reading this heartrending, often funny, and ultimately life-affirming memoir, I found myself thinking of the nonfiction masters Joan Didion and Patti Smith, for these are Marianne Leone’s peers. Written in lyrical, evocative prose that is as erudite as it is streetwise, this unforgettable memoir takes us unflinchingly into fathomless loss where the only lifeline may just be compassion for the suffering of other living creatures with whom we share this imperiled planet, dogs especially; Five-Dog Epiphany nourishes the soul as only genuine art can, by illuminating the simple yet elusive truth that love of all kinds holds the power to sustain and maybe even save us."

Andre Dubus III

"I tore through this book, couldn’t put it down. It was deeply, profoundly moving. And my rescue pitbull kept looking at me, trying to identify the sound coming out of me, then jumping up to lick off my tears. Very fitting. I am so grateful to Marianne Leone for sharing her story with the world."

Edie Falco

"Five-Dog Epiphany is a marvel—a poignant and revelatory memoir about the profound relationship between humans and their canine companions. Marianne Leone writes about grief and dogs and love and healing in a voice that’s raw and lyrical, and utterly her own."

Tom Perrotta

"Marianne Leone has written a gorgeous and often hilarious memoir that can break your heart and lift you up in one swift move. Her rich, delicious prose will move even those of us who’ve spent most of our lives basking in the warmth of dog love."

Julie Klam

2024-06-08
An actor, screenwriter, and essayist reflects on how caring for five small dogs helped her come to terms with the death of her quadriplegic, nonverbal son.

Canines became a fixture in Leone’s life in 1994, when her then-6-year-old son, Jesse, made it clear he wanted a dog. The author and her husband bought him a bichon frise puppy named Goody, and they nicknamed him the “Prince of Dogs.” Twelve years later—and a few months after Jesse passed away in his sleep and Leone was diagnosed with cancer—Goody died. Mourning her son and struggling to regain her health, the author realized that she also grieved for Goody. Seeking a way to heal, she adopted two quirky, cage-traumatized bichons, Lucky Dog and French Fry. Leone loved them deeply and pampered them with everything from the freedom to roam and play and $1,500 dog beds to filet mignon steaks brought home from fancy dinner parties. The bichons warily returned Leone’s affection while she wrestled with maternal grief by writing a memoir about Jesse. Like her son, the dogs were loved unconditionally, but their emotional scars would “be there forever, like mine.” Their deaths during the pandemic spurred the author to find two new rescue dogs, Titi and Sugar, to whom she wanted to reintroduce “their innate dog joy.” While Leone came to understand that all the dogs she cared for embodied some part of Jesse and his love, she also came to accept that her grief, the very thing that had brought the dogs to her, was something she would carry for the rest of her life. Candid and bighearted, this book about the healing power of animal companionship will warm the hearts of animal lovers and general audiences alike.

Joyful, affecting reading about love and family.

Kirkus Reviews