March 1, 2021
Dragged down by cancer, kidney failure, and recurring pneumonia, Pulitzer Prize winner Bragg had his heart lifted by The Speckled Beauty--a rambunctious stray dog who also needed love. In Seeing Ghosts, a study of grief and family, journalist Chow opens with emigration from China and Hong Kong to Cuba and America and moves to her mother's death from cancer (75,000-copy first printing). From award-winning news producer and photojournalist Copaken, author of the New York Times best-selling Shutterbabe, Ladyparts contextualizes soured marriage, solo parenting, and dating while ill with the substandard treatment of women by U.S. health care. In I Left My Homework in the Hamptons, Grossberg reveals exactly what it's like to tutor the children of New York's wealthiest families (50,000-copy first printing). Author of the New York Times best-booked Ten Thousand Saints, Henderson explores a long-term marriage that has survived her husband's struggles with physical and mental illness in Everything I Have Is Yours (75,000-copy first printing). Ranging from 38 Grand Slam titles to embracing her sexual identity at age 51, King details a life lived spectacularly in All In. In Honor Bound, McGrath recounts serving as the first woman to fly a combat mission for the Marine Corps and efforts to unseat Mitch McConnell as Kentucky senator. Winner of the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize, Yangon, Myanmar-born, Bangkok- and San Jos�-raised Myint's Names for Light probes silence, absence, and death over three generations of her family, defined by postcolonial struggle. In Sometimes I Trip On How Happy We Could Be, a Roxane Gay Audacious Bookclub November Pick, Perkins plumbs racism, wealth, poverty, beauty, and more from the perspective of a Southern Black woman. Qu's Made in China captures the challenges of an immigrant childhood, which included a mother so brutally demanding that Qu finally complained to New York's Office of Children and Family Services. In This Will All Be Over Soon, Saturday Night Live cast member Strong addresses grief over a close cousin's death from glioblastoma in the midst of the pandemic (75,000-copy first printing)..
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July 15, 2021
The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author puts a fresh spin on a classic theme: A wounded man rescues a wounded pet that in turn rescues him. Bragg's engaging tale of his life with an unruly Australian shepherd is the latest of his tragicomic memoirs of his family, which began with All Over but the Shoutin' and continued with Ava's Man and The Prince of Frogtown. Together, these books comprise one of the finest--and certainly the most comprehensive--group portraits of a poor, White Southern clan to appear in the past quarter-century. This installment finds the 60-year-old author back in Calhoun County, living in his mother's basement (working "exactly eleven steps from where I go to sleep") after bouts with pneumonia, heart and kidney failure, and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma that led to "chemo brain." Lonely and depressed, Bragg took in an anarchic, one-eyed, badly injured dog named Speck that had run wild in woods and pastures but stuck with him. With typically deadpan wit, the author writes, "This did not mean I was his master, merely his alibi, coconspirator, bailsman, and the driver of his ambulance." Speck tried to herd a one-ton truck, picked a fight with a cottonmouth, and acted as if "every wayward possum was a sign of the end times." But when Speck reveled in simple joys on his mother's farm, Bragg found that "to see a living thing that happy" was worth the difficulties. Their story ends with a few narrative threads dropped--one involving Bragg's brother Sam, who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer during the writing of this book and died after its completion--but the abrupt conclusion doesn't diminish an estimable cycle of books. Let's hope they will someday appear in uniform editions with an introduction that would help readers see them all in context. A celebrated Southern memoirist delivers a spirited book about a hell-raising dog and his effect on the author's life.
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August 1, 2021
Readers familiar with Bragg's books and magazine work know his down-home humor and infectious turns of phrase. Here, a one-eyed, physical and mental wreck of a dog shows up at Bragg's family homeplace in Alabama. Clearly abandoned, the dog is seemingly untameable, but Bragg sees a bit of his own self in this dog and affords him a wide berth and a place to heal. Bragg's mother and brother think it's a bad idea, yet his mom feeds the dog a good Southern diet of cornbread, collard greens, fried okra, and catfish. After the new pup terrorizes the other farm dogs and the donkeys, runs off and sustains more injuries, it's neutering time. Speckled Beauty, or Speck, as Bragg names him, is still more or less of a hot mess, hating Bragg's brother, thunder, gunfire, and the color red. Yet, Bragg's compassion for the dog's shortcomings give Speck the time and space to relearn to belong to someone. Does the world need yet another dog book? Yes, if it's this one.
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Starred review from September 1, 2021
Like so many strays, this "throwaway" dog named Speck had obviously been living outdoors for quite a while before he wandered onto the Alabama property of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Bragg (All Over But the Shoutin'; Ava's Man). Starving, filthy, with torn ears and multiple scars, and blind in one eye, this speckled dog stank. He chased and herded everything--the jackasses in the pasture, the resident cats, delivery vehicles, people. He dragged home stinking carcasses and peed on everything. Yet there was a bond between Bragg and Speck. Bragg had survived chemo but was wasted and exhausted by its side effects. Maybe he felt admiration for this stinky, furry survivor, or delight in the joy Speck exhibited every time Bragg looked at him. Whatever it was, there was no doubt that Speck was his dog, and he couldn't resist loving him. Bragg's story will resonate with dog lovers and with his many fans, who will recognize this book's enjoyably colloquial tone from his monthly essays in Southern Living magazine. VERDICT Highly recommended for readers who would enjoy an Appalachian Marley and Me where the dog doesn't die. Bookstores and libraries should anticipate enormous demand.--Susan Riley, formerly at Mamaroneck P.L., NY
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