by Rick Bragg
First published 2021
Rick Bragg faces cancer, chemotherapy, kidney failure, and pneumonia when a starved, half-dead dog appears behind his house. The seventy-six pound creature arrives as little more than wet hair and bad judgment. Speck proves himself a terrible companion who digs up graves, begs at screen doors, and terrorizes delivery drivers. He picks fights with cattle, rolls in donkey waste, and howls through the night. The defiant animal destroys rose bushes and makes one poor decision after another. Yet this self-destructive, foul-smelling stray transforms Bragg's life during his darkest period. The Pulitzer Prize winner chronicles how two broken beings find healing through their unlikely bond. Bragg writes with his signature mix of tenderness and grief, capturing the devotion between man and dog with both humor and raw honesty.
Genres: animals, grief, contemporary, dogs, memoir, biography-memoir
Vibes: emotional-atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unlikely-bond
256 pages · Hardcover · Knopf
Content warnings: medical-trauma