First published 1986
The little dog has nothing. No name marks him as belonging to anyone. No owner calls him home. He wanders through silent fields and empty roads, scraping together whatever scraps he can find. Hunger gnaws at him, but loneliness cuts deeper. Fear follows him everywhere he goes. Sometimes kind people take him in. They give him food and a warm place to sleep. But something always goes wrong. He gets chased away or has to leave. Each time he loses a temporary home, the hurt grows sharper. The dog keeps walking, keeps searching. His paws carry him past farms and through towns. He learns to survive on his own, but surviving is not the same as living. What he needs is not just shelter or food. He needs someone who will keep him forever. Someone who will give him a name and make him part of a family. The countryside stretches endlessly ahead of him, but somewhere in that vastness waits the home he has never known.
Genres: fiction, animals, literary-fiction, family-life, 20th-century
Vibes: emotional-atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, search-for-home
159 pages · Paperback · HarperCollins Publishers