A beautifully written, soul-stirring account of strife, darkness, hope and, above all, love shared between dog and human.

Gracious, I don’t know where to start! Guess at the beginning.

Which was that a little over a month ago, I received this email:

Dear Paul:

I hope this note finds you well. We were in touch several years about Racing in the Rain, and I wanted to get in touch about another dog-related novel that may be of interest to you and your readers.

I am working with Forge Books to set up a blog tour for Andrea Thalasinos, whose novel Traveling Light hits bookshelves and e-readers on July 16th. Traveling Light is an inspiring story about fate, family, and healing; it also explores the special bond that exists between humans and canines.

All best,
Wiley

—
Wiley Saichek
Marketing/Publicity Director, AuthorsOnTheWeb

Now I well remembered the book Racing in the Rain, writing about it in May 2011 and then a guest post from the author, Garth Stein, in September under the title of A game called Fetch.

Wiley included in his email a “flavour” of Andrea Thalasinos’ novel, as in:

Paula Makaikis is ashamed of her marriage. Driven out of their bedroom by Roger’s compulsive hoarding, she has spent the past ten years sleeping downstairs on her husband’s ratty couch. Distant and uninspired, Paula is more concerned with the robins landing on her office window ledge than her hard-earned position at the university. Until a phone call changes everything.

A homeless Greek man is dying in a Queens hospital and Paula is asked to come and translate. The old man tells her of his beloved dog, Fotis, who bit a police officer when they were separated. Paula has never considered adopting a dog, but she promises the man that she will rescue Fotis and find him a good home. But when Fotis enters her life she finds a companion she can’t live without. Suddenly Paula has a dog, a brand-new Ford Escape, an eight-week leave of absence, and a plan.

So Fotis and Paula begin the longest drive of their lives. In northern Minnesota, something compels her to answer a help-wanted ad for a wildlife rehabilitation center. Soon Paula is holding an eagle in her hands, and the experience leaves her changed forever.

Traveling Light explores what is possible when we cut the ties that hold us down and the heart is free to soar.

Of course, I wanted to read and review Andrea’s book.  Wiley and I agreed that a review published on the 18th July, i.e. today, would be perfect.    However, for reasons not entirely clear, the review copy of the book didn’t arrive until July 10th; just 8 days ago.  That made it too tight for me to read in that time, so I gave the book to Jean for her to read first.

If I tell you that Jean devoured the book and had it finished in three days, you won’t get a better idea than that of how moving and captivating she found it.  At the time of writing this post (9am yesterday) I was already up to page 160.  So the review that follows a little later in today’s post is the combined feelings of Jean and me.

One of the other things that Wiley offered was for Andrea to write a guest post for Learning from Dogs.  That now follows! I checked with Wiley: This is a true account from Andrea. (Trust me, you will be entranced!)

oooOOOooo

We’d come up to the edge of a wooden bridge that had almost as much space between the boards as the width of the boards themselves. Snow ordinarily covered the iffy-looking surfaces of such bridges, but the strength March’s early sun had melted clear down to the wood, leaving a full view of the snowy rocks in the creek bed below.

At the time, I didn’t know what my lead dog, Gorky, a red Siberian yearling (tiny in stature by Siberian standards) would do. From a puppy, she’d had more confidence in her furry little toe than I had in my whole body.

The dog positioned the team at the edge of the bridge and paused. She looked around, sniffing the wind, looking to the other side and then down through the slats into the creek bed below. I could tell she was thinking, calculating risks, odds and whether or not she had the moxie to cross. The other six dogs (including her father), were hooked up to the gangline behind her and by the set of their shoulders, their hedging and shirking back in their harnesses I could tell they were nervous.

It was a narrow trail, just wide enough for one dog team. Two more experienced teams were closing in from behind and I wondered what we would do. Rock walls butted up to either side of the trail, making it impossible to either turn around or move off the trail to let the others pass. I’d considered leading my dog team down into the gully, but the drop-off looked steep and as a rookie musher, I didn’t trust my skills to do so safely.

“Fifty bucks says she won’t take it,” the approaching musher called out from behind.

Thinking I’d be out the fifty before I could say boo, Gorky stepped up to the edge. Her body language changed. She’d committed to taking the bridge. As the red dog leaned into her harness, she gave the forward cue. The others fell in line, following her calm, forward gait with no signs of wavering.

After her first step I noticed that not once did Gorky look down, but rather kept her eye on the other side of the bridge as if she were already there.

Whenever I have to make difficult decisions, I think back to this moment. Sometimes I don’t have enough information or am waiting for some cosmic gut-affirmation that never seems to arrive when I need it. But one thing is clear. Like Gorky, once I set my mind on a course of action, I think of her and act.

Who knows if she was scared or not—she never said. The red dog lived to be 15 ½ and taught me more about not second-guessing than any person, place or thing I’ve come across since. Being brave doesn’t mean you’re not scared, it just means you do it anyway.

oooOOOooo

Traveling Light, a novel by Andrea Thalasinos

The opening of the book, In The Beginning, more of a prologue than anything else, firmly sets the context. For we read that the heroine of the story, Paula Makaikis, is tipped out of what is a highly unsatisfactory marriage into “the longest drive of her life” by a phone call from Celeste, Paula’s best friend.

The drive comes out of the tragic death of an old Greek man who pleads, in his last few breaths, that Paula takes his dog, Fotis, before the pound puts the dog to sleep.

If I tell you that by page 71, I had been brought to tears on two occasions then you will understand the depth of feeling that Andrea conveys: about life; about love; and the precious nature of a dog called Fotis .

This book, even as a work of fiction, seems to reach out to the reader, well to this reader anyway, with many messages of what life is all about.  Take this for example, from page 104:

Paula few out of the Holland Tunnel into the early colors of the morning. Gas pedal depressed, windows open, her hair blowing, the faster she accelerated the better she felt.  Getting up to eighty, then ninety, she thought maybe the wind would whisk her thoughts away.

Jersey was a blur except for periodic traffic congestion; Pennsylvania went on like a past life.  The faster she drove, the clearer the sense that there was somewhere she needed to be.  It wasn’t California or New York.  It wasn’t a place.  The map was nothing but lines, numbers, destinations.  Wherever she was meant to be, she’d know it when she got there.

How many of us have shaken off our troubles as a dog shakes off water from its coat and ended up coming to a place and knowing that we were at the place we were meant to be!

In many ways, the book is a lovely fairy-tale, right up to the perfect ending.  But in so many other ways the book is a reminder that we only have one life.  Easy to say but less easy to embrace fully with heart and head.  In fact, the book reinforces something that I wrote as a private letter to a family member in consequence of my sister’s recent death.  I will share just a portion of that letter because I sense Andrea Thalasinos would love to see how her book reaches out to her readers.

Be clear about the purpose of life: your life.  Do not put off what brings meaning, truth and happiness.  Not even for a day.  Live your beautiful life now; live it this day.

Thus for both Jean and me, this was the most beautiful of books and both of us have no hesitation in strongly recommending it.

Big thanks to Wiley Saichek for giving Jean and me the opportunity to read Traveling Light.

oooOOOooo

Now here’s an offer.

Wiley has offered a free copy of Andrea’s book as a ‘give-away’ from Learning from Dogs.  Here’s the plan.

Would you like to write a story about any aspect of the relationship that dogs can have with humans?

Any length, truth or fiction; it doesn’t matter.  Email your story to me (learningfromdogs (at) gmail (dot) com) to be received by the end of Wednesday, 31st July 2013, Pacific Daylight Time.

Then during the early part of August, I will publish every one received with some mechanism for readers to ‘score’ the stories and the winning author will be sent a free copy of the book.