And all of that comes alive through Bunker and how he leads the author through her depression. The real story here is about resilience, acceptance, trust, connection and belief in something bigger. But it didn’t take many more pages to understand that, while depression is certainly a major player in the book, it is by no means is it the main character. My interest waned a bit at first…I wanted to read about Bunker, the dog. At first, this book seemed to be the story of the author’s struggle with depression. Rick’s recent book and these other four dog books all taught me something about dogs and about writing. Part of why I love to read is to learn how to be the kind of writer of stories I’d want to read. This little dog book ranks high up there with four others that have fed my soul, tickled my funny bone and brought me to tears. If you’ve ever had a dog that wasn’t perfect, you’ll recognize many of Rick’s perfectly told stories. Speck gets factored into the count for Thanksgiving dinner and has a Christmas list that includes cocktail weenies, sliced ham and a dog bed (which Rick kind of counts as edible since Speck ate the last two he had). And there’s lot of talk of food – both the human and canine kind (sometimes they are the same). In one paragraph, Rick would have me crying. Telling him to behave, even after almost two years now, is like telling him it is Tuesday.” “In his first two months here, he was incarcerated twenty-nine times. This passage foretells the whole concept of the book: Sixteen essays lay out various episodes of Speck’s egregious behavior woven in with stories of Rick’s sideways love for this wild creature. In this book, Rick tells the stories of Speck, a bad-boy mixed breed (or mutt as he would have been called before that term lost favor). I’ve long admired his spot-on southern-isms that completely avoid the “fingers on the chalkboard” of writers who try to fake knowing the real south and how it sounds, feels, smells and tastes. “All Over but the Shoutin’” was Rick’s first book that pulled me into his writing.

And there’s a special place in the writer universe for writers who can script a good dog story – whether it’s through poetry, fiction, personal essay, photo captions or a good dog obit.Īt the time I got this question, I was in the middle of “The Splendid Beauty … A Dog and His People” by Rick Bragg. This is the tenth in a series of summer “Blink Book Reviews” by Reba Hull CampbellĪ young friend recently asked me to choose my favorite dog book.

Blink book review