The Speckled Beauty: A Dog and His People

Gifted storyteller Rick Bragg strikes again with The Speckled Beauty: A Dog and His People an utterly unexpected and absolutely delightful love letter to his dog, Speck.

A known criminal entity around the Alabama haunts of his owner, Speck is a locus of trouble. Thrown in “jail”—code for getting penned up rather than allowed to run free—twenty-three times in his first month with Bragg, Speck wreaks a kind of darling havoc on the farm and the animals he encounters. Much to the chagrin of the farmers, and likely the animals, he is boisterous, troublesome, and too full of life to be contained by the traditional rules of civility. But he is also a rescuer, specifically of Bragg, who found a renewed hope and presence when Speck came into his life after Bragg’s battle with cancer.

Told in hilarious detail and with a warmth that radiates right off the page, The Speckled Beauty is the kind of book that makes you want to hug every single dog—and maybe even person–you see, no matter how ornery or old.