A warm and heartfelt memoir perfect for fans of the author’s first two dog-focused books.
A bestselling author tells the very personal story of how and why she became involved in lost animal search and rescue missions.
Charleson’s (The Possibility Dogs: What a Handful of "Unadoptables" Taught Me About Service, Hope, and Healing, 2013, etc.) dog Puzzle had long worked by her side searching for lost people or those who had been victims of catastrophe. Then the author brought home a Maltipoo rescue named Ace whose “dignified, shabby gentility” and last-minute rescue from euthanasia became a talking point for her and the parents she kept at arm's length. Despite a harrowing existence as a lost canine, Ace showed the marks of a dog who had once been loved; he also revealed a knack for locating lost pets. Charleson familiarized herself with the tactics of lost animal search and began training Ace and Puzzle in on-the-ground location strategies. As she helped reunite pets with their owners, the author began recalling the life she had led with the parents who had “made me a rescuer.” Though they were deeply troubled, both shared a common bond in their love for animals that was so strong that they often spent beyond their limited means to save strays. But the author’s own life with the pet-loving parents who “had rarely been wonderful together” was difficult. The family moved often, and when Charleson was a teenager, her mother left to start a life on her own; after that, the three of them slowly drifted apart. In a touching twist of irony, the Maltipoo stray was the one who ultimately came to Charleson's rescue. Not only did he help heal the relationship with her parents; he also became a source of comfort when Puzzle and her parents eventually died. Moving and profound, Charleson’s book affirms the special human-animal connection and fully celebrates the healing powers of forgiveness and love.
A warm and heartfelt memoir perfect for fans of the author’s first two dog-focused books.Pub Date: June 4, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-328-99505-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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