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The Speckled Beauty: A Dog and His People
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40/99
Critics
88/99
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Scholars
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34/99
Volume
94/99
Rating
83/99
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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."
"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 ..."
"Readers familiar with Bragg's books and magazine work know his down-home humor and infectious turns of phrase ..."
"[A] fresh spin on a classic theme: A wounded man rescues a wounded pet that in turn rescues him ..."
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