Home Books The Speckled Beauty: A Dog and His People

The Speckled Beauty: A Dog and His People

The Speckled Beauty: A Dog and His People

by Rick Bragg

Knopf ·2021 ·256 pages ·Memoir
Near the Top
Near the Top
I Index
64/99
Maybe Someday

40/99

Critics

Top of the Pile

88/99

Readers

n/a

Scholars

46/99

Rating

34/99

Volume

94/99

Rating

83/99

Volume

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About This Book

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER - From the best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of All Over but the Shoutin', the warmhearted and hilarious story of how his life was transformed by his love for a poorly behaved, half-blind stray dog. Speck is not a good boy. He is a terrible boy, a defiant, self-destructive, often malodorous boy, a grave robber and screen door moocher who spends his days playing chicken with the Fed Ex man, picking fights with thousand-pound livestock, and rolling in donkey manure, and his nights howling at the moon. He has been that way since the moment he appeared on the ridgeline behind Rick Bragg's house, a starved and half-dead creature, seventy-six pounds of wet hair and poor decisions. Speck arrived in Rick's life at a moment of looming uncertainty. A cancer diagnosis, chemo, kidney failure, and recurring pneumonia had left Rick lethargic and melancholy. Speck helped, and he is helping, still, when he is not peeing on the rose of Sharon. Written with Bragg's inimitable blend of tenderness and sorrow, humor and grit, The Speckled Beauty captures the extraordinary, sustaining devotion between two damaged creatures who need each other to heal.


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Reviews

"The Speckled Beauty takes its place beside Willie Morris' My Dog Skip, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' animal narratives and William Faulkner's dog stories—as well as all those short tales of devoted dogs in Field & Stream—confirming once more Bragg's enduring artfulness and cracking good ability to spin memorable, affectionate tales."

Henry L. Carrigan Jr.· BookPage Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Bragg is at his best here when he tells the story straight — it's a good story, the slow metamorphosis of this dog from vicious wild creature to somewhat benign companion ..."

Laurie Hertzel· The Minneapolis Star Tribune Read review ↗ Near the Top

"Readers familiar with Bragg's books and magazine work know his down-home humor and infectious turns of phrase ..."

Joan Curbow· Booklist Read review ↗ Near the Top

"[A] fresh spin on a classic theme: A wounded man rescues a wounded pet that in turn rescues him ..."

Kirkus Read review ↗ Near the Top

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