Today I am linking up to Book Beginnings hosted by Rose City Reader where readers share the first sentence of the current book they are reading.
The Mountaintop School for Dogs: And Other Second Chances
by Ellen Cooney
by Ellen Cooney
"It was dusk on a winter day, and from high on the mountain came barking, drifting down above the snow like peals of a bell, one, two, three, four, more, just to say the light was leaving, but that was all right: here I am, I'm a dog, all is well."
Thoughts on Intro: I love how animated this book begins. From the introduction, the reader gets the sense that the dogs are going to be key characters as well. As a dog owner myself, I am really excited to read this story. There is much that animals can teach us and they provide a unique energy that offers such joy! The Mountaintop School for Dogs is sure to be a terrific read for those with four-legged friends!
About the Book (from amazon.com): Sanctuary. Place of refuge. Training school. Command center for The Network. Home for strays and rescued dogs. Evie is stuck at The Inn, managed by the stern and mysterious Mrs. Auberchon, although she’s supposed to join a training program at The Sanctuary. That’s what she signed up for—never mind that she lied and doesn’t know the first thing about animals except what she’s learned from a breed guide, from the notes someone keeps leaving, and from videos online, like one that asks: Please can more people be nicer to dogs? Once up on the mountain with staffers, volunteers, and her dog students, Evie takes notes on the new things she’s learning. Alpha. Forgiveness. Play. Rehabilitation. Like the racing greyhound who refuses to move, the golden retriever who returns every time he’s adopted, and the rottweiler who’s a hopeless candidate for search-and-rescue, Evie came from a troubled past. She writes: “Rescue. Best. Verb. Ever.” As she creates her own training manual, she may even write an entry on herself. A worthy shelf-mate to books by Garth Stein and Carolyn Parkhurst, this is a brilliantly engaging novel about finding fellow animals who may bring you a deeper sense of home, healing, and the power of inventing a future.
* The Mountaintop School for Dogs, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, is scheduled to be released Aug. 5, 2014.
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| My Furbaby, Chloe |
You can read by review of Cooney's Thanksgiving here
and my review of Cooney's Lambrusco here.
Ellen Cooney was born in 1952 in Clinton, Massachusetts. She is the author of eight novels and stories published in The New Yorker and many literary journals. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Massachusetts Artists Foundation, and taught creative writing for over twenty-five years, most recently in the writing program at MIT. She now lives in mid-coast Maine.
Happy Reading,
Rebecca
