You. Me. Together. Always.
His heart glowed to a gold more glorious than any Forever. It shone brighter than all the blue skies and green fields and sunny days of anywhere and everywhere put together.
A few years ago I read another Dan Gemeinhart book - The Honest Truth - it captivated me. Last month I spied this book by Dan at a library book fair and the Teacher-Librarian kindly gave me this copy. Good Dog is a 'harder' book than The Honest Truth. Harder in the sense of emotional distress. The lines between good and evil are powerfully drawn. The scenes between the hell hounds and our two dog heroes Brodie and Tuck are harrowing. This is not a book for the faint-hearted.
Brodie has died. As the story opens he is in the afterlife but this is a place of transition. Brodie cannot move on because he has unfinished business back with his boy. He is allowed to go back to the land of the living but there are conditions. He will be invisible to humans and his time will be short.
"You're not going back as you were. You're going back as you are. A spirit. Nothing more. You're going back to a living world ... but you're going back dead. ... Your spirit will still have life for a while, down there,' the angel said. 'You'll even be able to see the glow of it. But with each moment in that world, it will fade. When your glow is gone, Brodie, you'll be stuck. You'll be lost. Forever."
"Every time you really touch the world, every time you make yourself real enough to do something - like jump on a truck - it costs you a little bit of your soul. Even walking down this sidewalk right now, all this touching of the world ... it's taking a little of our souls, just a drop at a time."
Brodie listens to these warnings but he knows he simply has no choice. His boy needs him. Snatches of his former life and especially his final moments with Aiden play out in his mind in fragmented flashbacks. For the reader, these are like pieces of an unfolding puzzle. I enjoy storytelling like this where the reader has to put in some work to understand what has happened in the past. The reader also has to trust the author will keep you safe over the course of this dangerous journey.
All of your senses will be on high alert when you read Good Dog. Here is an example - the hell hound bites into Brodie:
"Darkly's teeth sank into his shoulder. No. His teeth sank into ... him. It was like nothing he'd ever felt. His teeth sank deep, and a high, ripping whimper was torn from Brodie's throat. But it didn't feel like pain, this bite. It felt far worse than pain."
I'd like to talk about motivations at this point. Brodie needs to help his boy and this is easy to understand but what of Tuck? He is a loyal companion to Brodie but he also has unfinished business from his former life. Tuck is such a great dog. I wanted to reach out and hug him. He is full of life and bounce but it is the cat Patsy who is the most complex character and I found myself constantly questioning her true motives for helping Brodie.
"Why are you even here, Patsy? Really. If you don't wanna help, if you think we're too dumb and this whole thing is stupid, then why are you hanging around?' 'I told you, sausage-for-brains, I was bored.' 'No way,' Brodie snapped. 'You wouldn't come all this way and go through all this stuff just 'cause you were bored. There's gotta be another reason. Tell us. What is it?"
I would recommend Good Dog for a very mature senior Primary student. I would follow Good Dog with The Midnight Zoo by Sonya Hartnett and Dog by Andy Mulligan. For a slightly younger audience take a look at One dog and his boy by Eva Ibbotson which has the same emotional arc. Here is a video where you can see Dan talking about his book. Click on the reviews below for more plot details.
Action-packed, highly suspenseful, and deeply moving. Perfect. Kirkus
Brodie senses before he thinks; his narrative flows in visceral waves of experience. These sensory pleasures are no match for the emotional sturdiness of Brodie’s good heart. BookPage
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