One Dog Barked, The Other Howled: A Meditation on Several Lives of a Minor American Writer

This is the story of a man who left instructions that the word “WRITER”—in capital letters—should be carved into the center of his tombstone.

Philip F. Deaver’s writing won Flannery O’Connor and O. Henry awards. For 20 years, he was the writer-in-residence and creative writing professor at Florida’s prestigious Rollins College, until frontotemporal degeneration (FTD) robbed him of his ability to write or speak.

This book’s subtitle, acknowledging Philip Deaver as a “minor” American writer,...