Famed serial memoirist Rick Bragg shares a beguiling story of his quest to tame an exasperating, yet utterly lovable, stray dog.
Pulitzer Prize-winning memoirist Rick Bragg (The Best Cook in the World; My Southern Journey) grew out of rural Southern poverty, but the spirit of his storytelling has made him--and legions of readers--rich beyond measure. In The Speckled Beauty, he recalls how an aggressive, one-eyed stray dog, a wayward Australian shepherd, bolted into Bragg's life when he was down and out.
Bragg--then
60 years old--had retreated to Calhoun County, Ala., to live and work in his
elderly mother's basement. He was there to assist during the pandemic, and he
was also recovering from serious complications after battling non-Hodgkin's
lymphoma. The unruly dog with speckled markings bounded into Bragg's life and
stuck around. Bragg's older brother, Sam, found him to be a pitiful stray with
"the attention span of a tick on a hot rock," implying, "A dog
like this, wild for so long, would only bring woe." But Bragg, who had
always admired the breed, takes up training "Speck" as a cause. The exasperating,
fearless dog chronically tests his patience ("The dog would not back down
from a rattlesnake"), but he ultimately charms Bragg, his mother and even
his skeptical brother with laughable antics: "How could you not love a dog
with a toilet-seat halo around his head?" And, Bragg claims, "My dog
would battle me to death over the last cold tater tot."
Amid dark days, bright Speck shows up at just the right
time. How fortunate for readers that the joy of his presence--enhanced by the
wit and wisdom of Bragg's
inimitable prose--will resonate far beyond the Bragg homestead.
The
Speckled Beauty by Rick Bragg
Knopf (Doubleday Books),
$26.00 hardcover, 9780525658818, 256 pages
Publication Date: September 21, 2021
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NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being
posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's
Edition
(September 24, 2021), link HERE
