The narrative opens on 10-year-old Marlene, who lives in rural Tennessee during the Great Depression. During summer break, she helps her family with chores, spends time with her 6-year-old brother, Silas, and makes regular trips into town to barter eggs at Mr. Butler\u2019s grocery store. On one of these trips, she encounters a redbone coonhound \u201ccut loose and left behind\u201d by his previous owner. A cruel local, Mr. Arthur, says he would shoot the stray if only the sheriff would let him. Marlene asks her parents if she can bring the dog home, but they refuse due to financial constraints. Still, Marlene fixates on the stray, whom she nicknames \u201cRed,\u201d and after a marked change in Marlene\u2019s mood, her father relents and says Marlene can have the dog. The only problem is catching the skittish canine; Marlene establishes a daily routine of tracking the dog, sticking \u201cright with him like pine sap.\u201d On one of these walks, Red abruptly runs away after spying Mr. Arthur, who threatens to kill the hound. Marlene begins leaving bowls of food scraps outside, and Red begins to eat. One morning, Marlene finds Red incapacitated; she later surmises that Mr. Arthur poisoned the dog. Doc Baker treats Red, and the dog goes home with Marlene. Marlene\u2019s mother is displeased, exclaiming, \u201cthat miserable beast is going to have to go!\u201d But when Red performs a heroic act, her opinion changes. <\/p>\n
Caruthers effectively immerses readers in 1930s ambiance through the details of Mr. Butler\u2019s grocery store, storytelling locals, and vernacular like \u201cafeared\u201d and \u201ctweren\u2019t.\u201d She paints a vivid image of Red with details like, \u201cHe had a kink in his tail, as though it had been broken in a slammed door or gate and had grown back crooked. His ribs stuck out like the slats of an old washboard.\u201d The authors\u2019 unique similes are sensory-rich: Marlene\u2019s skirt \u201clightly clung to [her] skin like a cicada\u2019s exoskeleton\u201d on a humid day; Mr. Butler lifted her egg basket as though it were \u201cas light as one of Mama\u2019s prize-winning biscuits.\u201d Readers can feel Marlene\u2019s emotions through somatic descriptions like, \u201cMy heart thudded like it was going to pop clean out of my chest and ricochet across the room.\u201d However, Marlene\u2019s obsession with Red seems unhealthy, causing her to lose sleep and become physically ill with worry over the dog. Marlene\u2019s feelings toward Red are often melodramatic\u2014she bristles at a birthday present of tickets to a Shirley Temple movie because the thought of leaving Red for a few hours \u201ccrushed [her] very soul.\u201d Some young readers may not understand some of the archaic terms and references, like when Marlene describes her father\u2019s job as \u201ccatch-as-catch-can\u201d or the day\u2019s temperature as \u201chot as the pits of Hades.\u201d A racially charged subplot in which Marlene testifies against Mr. Arthur in a murder trial also feels inappropriate given the book\u2019s target audience and main subject matter.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The narrative opens on 10-year-old Marlene, who lives in rural Tennessee during the Great Depression. During summer break, she helps her family with chores, spends time with her 6-year-old brother, Silas, and makes regular trips into town to barter eggs at Mr. Butler\u2019s grocery store. On one of these trips, she encounters a redbone coonhound […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":3384,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3383"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}