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Brown Dog

Novellas

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

New York Times bestselling author Jim Harrison is one of America's most beloved writers, and of all his creations, Brown Dog—a bawdy, reckless, down-on-his-luck Michigan Indian—has earned cult status with readers in the more than two decades since his first appearance. For the first time, Brown Dog gathers all the Brown Dog novellas, including one never before published, into one volume—the ideal introduction (or reintroduction) to Harrison's irresistible Everyman.

In these novellas, BD rescues the preserved body of an Indian from Lake Superior's cold waters; overindulges in food, drink, and women while just scraping by in Michigan's Upper Peninsula; wanders Los Angeles in search of an ersatz Native activist who stole his bearskin; adopts two Native children; and flees the authorities then returns across the Canadian border aboard an Indian rock band's tour bus. The collection culminates with "He Dog," never before published, which finds BD marginally employed and still looking for love (or sometimes just a few beers and a roll in the hay) as he goes on a road trip from Michigan to Montana and back, arriving home to the prospect of family stability, and, perhaps, a chance at redemption.

Brown Dog underscores Harrison's place as one of America's most irrepressible writers and one of the finest practitioners of the novella form.

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    • AudioFile Magazine
      Jim Harrison's Brown Dog character has been a favorite of readers for more than two decades. Here, five of these novellas are brought together for the first time. Narrators Bronson Pinchot, Ray Porter, and Lloyd James evoke the simple nature of Brown Dog's character. A down-on-his-luck pulp cutter of uncertain Native American lineage, Brown Dog has simple tastes and ambitions. Left to his own devices, he'd be content to spend his days in Michigan's remote Upper Peninsula, fly fishing and living rent free in deer-hunting shacks in exchange for repairs. But his passion for peppermint schnapps and women contributes to a series of misadventures. With affable and gentle readings the narrators each adopt expressive Native American accents for the voice of Brown Dog. Pinchot's amused tone in "Westward Ho," in particular, had me smiling at Brown Dog's encounter with Southern California culture. The production is equally strong throughout. S.N.M. (c) AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from September 23, 2013
      This essential collection of six novellas (including the never-before-published “He Dog”) offers an omnibus look at Brown Dog, a pure Harrison creation and a glorious character who will make readers howl with delight. From his first scuffling introduction in The Woman Lit by Fireflies, this boozy, backwoods, tree-cutting, snow-shoveling part–Native American from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula wins over his audience with a bawdy, sometimes thoughtful tone. In these stories, he shambles from a day-to-day set of misadventures arising from some illegal salvage diving to a loopy picaresque jaunt through Los Angeles (“I just want my bearskin back,” he says), to something much more profound and redemptive, standing in as a father figure to several vulnerable Indian and partially Indian children, despite the absence of much paternal influence in his own life. When a girlfriend tells him he’s “involved in failure as a habit,” Brown Dog says, “I never felt I did all that badly at life.” He mentions a youth spent as a bare-knuckle fighter, but his greatest successes are usually horizontal, as he manages a string of unlikely, often alcohol-fueled sexual conquests, from Shelley the anthropologist, who schemes to get him to reveal the location of an ancient Indian burial mound, to a lonely Jewish dentist who wants to “go at it like canines unmindful of the noise they made.” Often moving, frequently funny, these 500 pages offer the best way to get acquainted (or reacquainted) with one of literature’s great characters.

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  • English

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