If you love dogs (and who doesn’t?), the author Rick Bragg, or both, you won’t want to miss Bragg’s The Speckled Beauty…a Dog and His People. In my opinion, any book that makes me laugh out loud on one page and has me reading through tears on the next is a book well written.
Speck wanders into Bragg’s yard one day–an uninvited “guest” who just stays. Slowly, he then wanders into Rick’s soul as well. He is, as Bragg says, a “terrible dog,” bent on destroying or eating everything he encounters. But Speck lives under the delusion that he’s a good boy because of, as Bragg says, “the thousands of times I have lied and told him so.”
In his down home-flavored method of writing, Bragg hilariously recounts his family’s life with Speck, and how the dog slowly wins the hearts of Bragg’s mother and older brother. You’ll smell the hay in the fields, visualize the dog chasing chickens in the yard, and hear the distant call of the wild from other renegade dogs–a life and order Speck has abandoned in order to bring salvation to his human companions.
Slowly, you’ll see that the favor Bragg does by taking in Speck is more than repaid in kind by the love and joy the dog brings to him. Each is better for having the other.
Rick Bragg is a good old boy who has returned to his roots in Alabama…and also just happens to be a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist. This is the latest in his series of bestsellers written in his endearing Southern style. You’ll also find him on the back page of each month’s edition of Southern Living.
Reviewed November 2021
If you love dogs (and who doesn’t?), the author Rick Bragg, or both, you won’t want to miss Bragg’s The Speckled Beauty…a Dog and His People. In my opinion, any book that makes me laugh out loud on one page and has me reading through tears on the next is a book well written.
Speck wanders into Bragg’s yard one day–an uninvited “guest” who just stays. Slowly, he then wanders into Rick’s soul as well. He is, as Bragg says, a “terrible dog,” bent on destroying or eating everything he encounters. But Speck lives under the delusion that he’s a good boy because of, as Bragg says, “the thousands of times I have lied and told him so.”
In his down home-flavored method of writing, Bragg hilariously recounts his family’s life with Speck, and how the dog slowly wins the hearts of Bragg’s mother and older brother. You’ll smell the hay in the fields, visualize the dog chasing chickens in the yard, and hear the distant call of the wild from other renegade dogs–a life and order Speck has abandoned in order to bring salvation to his human companions.
Slowly, you’ll see that the favor Bragg does by taking in Speck is more than repaid in kind by the love and joy the dog brings to him. Each is better for having the other.
Rick Bragg is a good old boy who has returned to his roots in Alabama…and also just happens to be a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist. This is the latest in his series of bestsellers written in his endearing Southern style. You’ll also find him on the back page of each month’s edition of Southern Living.
Reviewed November 2021