Dogs of Babel by Caroline Parkhurst. 

I may have bought this book because the author shares a last name with a good friend of mine.   I tend to stock up on books whenever I feel flush.  Or walk within striking distance of a book seller.  Or a computer.  I have a lot of books, and I keep buying more, and the order in which I read them is a mystery to me.

Right, so, this fell into the accidental local-author streak.  This was my favorite of the bunch.  The novel is about a man whose wife dies under mysterious circumstances, with only their Rhodesian Ridgeback as a witness.  The bereft widower becomes obsessed with the idea that the pooch can somehow learn to speak or communicate in English, and thus tell him how his wife came to fall to her death from a tree in their backyard. 

Kooky, right?  Yeah, but so is grief.  And love.  And mental illness.  I fell in love with the dead woman, with her husband, and particularly with their dog.  Parkhurst knows dogs, and I love dogs, so this was a great read for me.  But I think it  would be a very difficult book to read for many animal lovers–the protagonist meets some really terrible people who do terrible things to dogs.  But in the end, the novel comes to a sense of peace.  It’s particularly impressive, considering it was Parkhurst’s first book.  I’m fer it, in other words.  And that’s that.

Now go hug your dogs–they deserve it.

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