Shadow

She was lifted from the warm dark beneath the porch, carried into a house full of strange smells, and set down in front of the small human she would love beyond all reason. She had no word for it. She only knew: this is mine.

Shadow tells the whole of one dog's life from the inside - without a single human sentence she can understand, without ever once believing she is doing wrong. To her, the yard is a kingdom to be held. The soft old dog by the door is a weakness to be filed away. The child with bitten nails and grass-stained hands is the center of everything, the one being she was put on earth to keep.

And love, in the only language she has, is protection. Order. Possession. The oldest arithmetic there is - the sorting of the world into what is above and what is below.

Told entirely through Shadow's wordless, luminous understanding, this is the story of a bond too fierce for the world it was born into, and of the family who tried, for as long as they could, to hold on. It asks the question every devoted owner is afraid to ask aloud: what happens when a dog's whole heart becomes the very thing that cannot be lived with?

Some dogs cannot be made safe, no matter how much they are loved. Shadow never stops believing she is keeping her people safe. That is the tragedy.

A story for anyone who has ever looked into a dog's eyes and wondered what was looking back. Follow Shadow all the way to the end - but know that love is not always enough.

A story for anyone who has ever looked into a dog's eyes and wondered what was looking back. Follow Shadow all the way to the end - but know that love is not always enough.

For readers of Fifteen Dogs and other unflinching stories told from inside an animal's mind.