Publisher's Synopsis
Ingrid E. Lynch brings her decades as an educator to bear in her books about life and love in divergent circumstances. Now retired, she vividly recalls her role as an English and history teacher in two nearly opposite settings, when she watched dysfunctional families (is there any other kind?) with interest and concern. In A Mattering of Dogs, her fifth book, she draws together every shred of what she has learned about people and dogs, and it won't take long for the reader to recognize that she may very well prefer the company of dogs. Other books in Lynch's portfolio are A Curse of Wood: Terrapin Cove (2012), A Monkey Prays (2015), Conshe Mountain (2016), and The Man in the Arroyo (2017). In A Mattering of Dogs, Lynch takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of small town politics mixed in with an old Indian treaty that thwarts the ambitions of a central character. She and her friends from childhood find themselves on opposite sides in a land deal that would destroy family farms. One old friend finds himself near death due to an environmental hazard that only a dog can discover. Combine all that with a woman who can sense what dogs are saying and an old Native American who gives wine to his apple trees, and you have a delightful story that twists and turns in and around death and deception and, of course, love. Perhaps this story is, at its heart, about a man who feels defeated about love for a woman, and a woman who feels defeated about love for a man. This story draws them together, tied to the love of the land and its animals.
