Brown Dog: Novellas
New York Times best-selling 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-published one, 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.
Praise for Jim Harrison’s Brown Dog:
“There is broad comedy in the writing, but also tenderness, and never a moment when the reader isn’t rooting for Brown Dog to get it right. . . . We would all be the poorer if deprived of Jim Harrison’s first-rate stories.”—The New York Times Book Review on The Summer He Didn’t Die
“Brown Dog, an old friend to fans of Harrison, . . . boasts the rare ability to reject the frills and artificial complexities of modern life and keep to the basics. . . . Like reading a book describing dear friends.”—Miami Herald on The Farmer’s Daughter
“A 21st-century version of Huck Finn.”—The Charleston Gazette on The Farmer’s Daughter
An Amazon Best Book of the Month, December 2013:
Brown Dog is a maddeningly simple man. As long as he’s got a few crumpled dollars, or a dog by his side, or a bottle at hand, or a woman in his bed, he’s just fine. Ever since I was introduced to Harrison’s part-Native American alter ego twenty-plus years ago (in The Woman Lit By Fireflies), B.D. has felt familiar. He reminds me of my brother, of high school friends, of an alternate version of myself. B.D. is universal, a likeable doofus, an Everyman skirt-and-booze chaser, all id all the time. So why does he feel like one of the more complex characters in modern literature? Maybe it’s got something to do with the leavening offset of strong female characters, one of whom scolds B.D.: “You think each day is a fresh start, which it isn’t.” Or maybe it’s the looming breadth and beauty of Harrison’s playground, the dark and piney Upper Peninsula of Michigan, a version of Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County. Across numerous books and many years, Harrrison has rarely veered far from the life of B.D., who can display “the warrior’s courage of four beers” one moment and weep at the memory of a childhood dog the next. In these six novellas–one never before published–Harrison reminds us that he’s still vibrant, still a voice for the underdog, still a true literary original. Writers like this just don’t come around very often. And enduring characters like Brown Dog–a little bit Huck Finn, a little bit Don Quixote–come around even less frequently. —Neal Thompson
New York Times best-selling 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-published one, 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.
Praise for Jim Harrison’s Brown Dog:
“There is broad comedy in the writing, but also tenderness, and never a moment when the reader isn’t rooting for Brown Dog to get it right. . . . We would all be the poorer if deprived of Jim Harrison’s first-rate stories.”—The New York Times Book Review on The Summer He Didn’t Die
“Brown Dog, an old friend to fans of Harrison, . . . boasts the rare ability to reject the frills and artificial complexities of modern life and keep to the basics. . . . Like reading a book describing dear friends.”—Miami Herald on The Farmer’s Daughter
“A 21st-century version of Huck Finn.”—The Charleston Gazette on The Farmer’s Daughter
