Three Wild Dogs (and the truth)
A Memoir
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
WINNER OF THE AUSTRALIAN INDIE BOOK AWARD FOR NONFICTION
“Playful and poignant . . . will be enjoyed by readers of the best dog tales, such as The Art of Racing in the Rain, for its ability to evoke both the aggravation and deep love that dogs foster.”—BookPage
In this poignant, funny, and disarmingly honest memoir, one of the world’s most beloved storytellers, the number one New York Times bestselling author of The Book Thief, tells of his family’s adoption of three troublesome rescue dogs—a charming and courageous love story about making even the most incorrigible animals family.
There’s a madman dog beside me, and the hounds of memory ahead of us . . . It’s love and beasts and wild mistakes, and regret, but never to change things.
What happens when the Zusak family opens their home to three big, wild, street-hardened dogs—Reuben, more wolf than hound; Archer, blond, beautiful, destructive; and the rancorously smiling Frosty, who walks like a rolling thunderstorm?
The answer can only be chaos: There are street fights, park fights, public shamings, property damages, injuries, hospital visits, wellness checks, pure comedy, shocking tragedy, and carnage that must be read to be believed.
There is a reckoning of shortcomings and failure, a strengthening of will, but most important of all, an explosion of love—and the joy and recognition of family.
Three Wild Dogs (and the Truth) is a tender, motley, and exquisitely written memoir about the human need for both connection and disorder, a love letter to the animals who bring hilarity and beauty—but also the visceral truth of the natural world—straight to our doors and into our lives and change us forever.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this heartrending memoir, novelist Zusak (The Book Thief) recounts his family's love affair with three rowdy rescue dogs: Reuben, Archer, and Frosty. Writing after the last of the three died, Zusak—on the advice of his wife, Mika—processes his grief on the page, beginning with the couple's adoption of Reuben in 2009 and ending with Archer's death in 2021. In the middle is a hilarious and occasionally harrowing tale of how not to train incorrigible canines; Zusak's dogs bite a piano teacher, break the author's knee, and, in one particularly upsetting section, kill the family cat. Zusak offsets all the mayhem with poignant passages about more peaceful times with the animals, during which he wrote novels, played with his children, and ran on the beach with the dogs, "just us and rawest water." When it's time to chronicle each one's death, Zusak pulls no punches, conveying the depths of misery that come with seeing a pet to the end of its life. With a soft heart and a fluid pen, Zusak delivers an elegy for three misfit creatures that will resonate even with those who've never picked up a leash.
