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    The Dog Who Danced: A Novel
    The Dog Who Danced: A Novel
    The Dog Who Danced: A Novel
    Audiobook10 hours

    The Dog Who Danced: A Novel

    Written by Susan Wilson

    Narrated by Fred Berman and Christina Delaine

    5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    "Multiple hankies, dog lovers…this is an emotional read." –Library Journal

    If there's been a theme in Justine Meade's life, it's loss. Her mother, her home, even her son. The one bright spot in her loss-filled life, the partner she could always count on, was Mack, her grey and black Sheltie – that is, until she is summoned back to her childhood home after more than twenty years away.

    Ed and Alice Parmalee are mourning a loss of their own. Seven years after their daughter was taken from them, they're living separate lives together. Dancing around each other, and their unspeakable heartbreak, unable to bridge the chasm left between them. When they find a little black and gray dog by the side of the road, they take him in.

    Fiercely loyal, acutely perceptive and guided by a herd dog's instinct, Mack has a way of bringing out the best in his humans. Whether it's as Justine's partner, or just the ebb and flow of a family's rhythms, it's as though the little Shetland Sheepdog was born to bring people together.


    Everyone needs Mack. But to whom does the little dog who danced belong?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Audio
    Release dateMar 13, 2012
    ISBN9781427217219
    The Dog Who Danced: A Novel
    Author

    Susan Wilson

    From the time I was a little girl, the word "writer" held a special significance to me. I loved the word. I loved the idea of making up stories. When I was about twelve, I bought a used Olivetti manual typewriter from a little hole in the wall office machine place in Middletown, CT called Peter's Typewriters. It weighed about twenty pounds and was probably thirty years old. I pounded out the worst kind of adolescent drivel, imposing my imaginary self on television heroes of the time: Bonanza, Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Star Trek. Those are my earliest memories of my secret life of writing. For reasons I cannot really fathom, I never pursued writing as a vocation. Although I majored in English, I didn't focus on writing and it wasn't really until I was first married that I hauled out my old Olivetti and began to thump away at my first novel. This was, as I recall, an amorphous thinly plotted excercise in putting sentences together and has mercifully disappeared in some move or another. I didn't try anything more adventurous than some short stories and a lot of newsletters for various things I belonged to until we moved to Martha's Vineyard and I bought my first computer. My little "Collegiate 2" IBM computer was about as advanced as the Olivetti was in its heyday but it got me writing again and this time with some inner determination that I was going to succeed at this avocation. I tapped out two novels on this machine with its fussy little printer. Like the first one, these were wonderful absorbing exercises in learning how to write. What happened then is the stuff of day time soap opera. Writing is a highly personal activity and for all of my life I'd kept it secret from everyone but my husband, who, at the time, called what I did nights after the kids went to bed, my "typing." Until, quite by accident, I discovered that here on the Vineyard nearly everyone has some avocation in the arts. Much to my delight, I discovered a fellow closet-writer in the mom of my kids' best friends. For the very first time in my life I could share the struggle with another person. I know now that writers' groups are a dime a dozen and I highly recommend the experience, but with my friend Carole, a serendipitious introduction to a "real writer", Holly Nadler, resulted in my association with my agent. Holly read a bit of my "novel" and liked what she read, suggested I might use her name and write to her former agent. I did and the rest, as they say, is history. Not that it was an overnight success. The novel I'd shown Holly never even got sent to Andrea. But a third, shorter, more evolved work was what eventually grew into Beauty with the guidance of Andrea and her associates at the Jane Rotrosen Agency. The moral of the story: keep at it. Keep writing the bad novels to learn how to write the good ones. And, yes, it does help to know someone. Andrea might have liked my work, but the path was oiled by the introduction Holly Nadler provided. Hawke's Cove is my second published novel, although there is a "second" second novel in a drawer, keeping good company with the other "first" novels.

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    Reviews for The Dog Who Danced

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    • 5/5
      I admit that I’m not usually a big fan of pet stories of love and loss. They tend to make the dogs and cats too humanistic for my taste. However “the Dog that Danced” did a wonderful job of avoiding that. It was a unique portrayal of how a dog might see the world. Mack was a loyal shetland ruled largely by his instinct to protect and guide. The main characters were also accurately portrayed as realistically flawed human beings. Alice is too controlling, Ed runs away from his problems, and Justine is blinded by her own desires to see the consequences of her own actions. I definitely felt very closes to these characters since I also had to deal with the consequences of my own flaws. I found very little things that I can possibly complain about in this book. At most, I feel like the end was dragged out a bit. We all know that it's a sad thing for (spoiler block!) to happen but one of the characters just kept going on and on about the issue. It kind of sapped some of the sympathy I had for the situation. Overall, I enjoyed this book very much. It is a great book for readers of all ages, especially pet owners (whether they currently have a pet or have lost one). I never knew about canine freestyle and I have learned some neat things. I thought some of dog tricks were exaggerated but when I looked at the youtube videos, lo and behold, it is actually possible! For teaching me not to underestimate our furry friends, this book deserves five stars!Won in a giveaway in return for a honest review
    • 4/5
      I was lucky enough to get an advance copy .I REALLY enjoyed this book. The gamut of emotions I felt thruout the book was unbelievable. Everything from hatred ( especially for Artie - I would have loved to jump into the pages in order to give him a swift kick in the groin ) to love , disappointment to excitement and everything in between. I absolutely loved the ending. This is a must read for all dog lovers !
    • 5/5
      I listened to this in audio form. Went through so many emotions. Yelling at the dashboard of my car in anger, laughing, crying like a baby....This is a great book. Loved it. I think this is also because the voices were so well picked for the audio. The story is told from many standpoints and the dogs is especially touching.
    • 5/5
      In the style of "The Art of Racing in the Rain", or "Sight Hound". Stories of deep human trouble that is helped by the faithfull company of a dog. On the bright side, the dog here doesn't suffer the way the dogs in the two other mentioned books do. This makes "The Dog Who Danced" less heart breaking, and also more readable.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book. This is the story of Justine, a fortyish woman with a lot of mistakes behind her, whose closest family is her Sheltie dog Mack. Justine and Mack are true partners, even competing in dog freestyle dance competitions. Justine and Mack are separated during a cross-country trip to Justine's father's deathbed. Justine is frantic to find Mack, but must also fulfill family obligations. And it's the story of Alice and Ed, an older couple in the wake of a tragedy. They haven't really been living, just existing. Then they find a stray Sheltie sheepdog, and gradually find a renewed interest in life.This is a very emotional story. I felt Justine's panic and devastation at the loss of her dog. And I felt Ed and Alice's growing love for their new dog. And their "backstories" were heart-wrenching, too, and helped illustrated why this dog was so important to them at this point in their lives. This book is also a page-turner as we follow Justine's frantic cross-country search for her beloved dog.