Dog People

By Merry McInerney and Merry McInerney-Whiteford

Book Overview

The Dalton house, built almost 300 years ago by 12-year-old Trisha Dalton's ancestors, is the setting for the unravelling of Trisha's family under the pressure of cocktail hours that grow ever longer, gambling debts that grow larger, and bonds of love and loyalty that grow weaker. Growing up, Trisha learns the story of Sara Wilde, her "many greats" aunt who lived in the same house when it was new. A suitor had offered Sara's father an important tract of land in exchange for Sara's hand in marriage and Sara's father agreed. But when she refused the suitor, the suitor had her hanged as a witch. Sara's father, instead of coming to her defense, chose the land over his daughter. Now Trisha's father has to recover a big piece of the family land that he lost gambling. He decides to take the family to Atlantic City one Easter so that he can gamble. He is planning on winning a lot of money. He is planning on getting his land back.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312856997
• ISBN13: 9780312856991
• Release Date: April 1998
• Publisher: Forge Books
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.6" x 1.0" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

A Fine, Sensitive, Lovely Book

A Fine, Sensitive, Lovely BookRarely do I read a book as generous and gentle and moving as DOG PEOPLE. Merry McInerney-Whiteford beautifully explores what it meant to come of age in America in the heart of the 60s revolution, in a family as unstable as the society as a whole riddled with its own excesses, addictions, and boundary breaking. This is an exploration of gain in the face of loss, hope in the face of hopelessness, redemption in spite of death. A fine, oddly-neglected, book!

Fiction at its' finest!

One can't help but be completely captivated by McInerney-Whiteford's tale. Her attention to detail, nuance, and crystal-clear portrayals makes her a writer well worth following. Soulful, powerful and hopeful - her images are vivid, her characters real, and the plot, while painful, still anchors the reader with a keen understanding of pure resilience. You won't find romance novel, dime-store fluff here - this writer offers intellect, intrigue and 24 karat substance.

A Book For Readers

This book was very good, so well-written, and very moving. The setting (1968 in an enormous 1700s house isolated on a large tract of land in Salem, Massachusets) was perfect for the isolated, turbulent family and the scary plot. Alcoholism, gambling-ism, adultery--they're all here, and also here is a smart, kind, caring child named Trisha. She is like a symbol of hope, not just for the family, but for the country, for humanity. I really enjoyed reading this book, and was really sad when I realized I was nearing the end. Recommended highly!

A heart-wrenching page-turner

As painful as this story was to read, it simply can't be put down. For many of us, growing up was a whole lot more like this than the Brady Bunch or Cleaver household. One result of Dog People is that it takes us back to those dysfunctional days to acknowledge and comfort our struggling child, embodied here by Trisha. That power is what makes McInerney-Whiteford a natural-born storyteller, and her talent is fully displayed in this well-developed and moving novel.

McInerney-Whiteford is a deliciously gifted writer.

McInerney-Whiteford's second novel, Dog People, is a finely-wrought tale of the difficulties faced when a young girl comes of age. The (sometimes startlingly) prescient narrator, 12-year old Trisha Dalton, her parents, and her sisters Franny and Cat live in a centuries-old haunted house in Salem, Massachusettes. Creating emotionally complex and inextricably bound characters, McInerney-Whiteford poignantly describes Trisha's fate as we find her caught within the web of a quirky, dangerous, addictive and finally tragic family life. So insulated are Trisha and her family by their own manic and outrageous attempts simply to survive that the turbulent and historic decade in which the story takes place rarely enters the narrator's consciousness. ". . .these events were only headlines. . .at most, they reverberated into our world indirectly and then only briefly." For Trisha, the real trauma and turbulence of the 60's lie within and create in her an irreproachable ache of absence, which McInerney-Whiteford searingly describes as "exactly Billie Halliday's shape. . .an absence that had been there all my life. . .an absence only Billie Halliday could possibly fill." Creating descriptions such as these are reminiscent of Raymond Carver's singlularly definitive moments; moments which make the reader pause, shudder with sudden recognition, and fill with grief and longing. These are McInerny-Whiteford's gifts to us. The narrative flow, composed of moments and flights of beauty and despair such as these, begins its evocative ascent from page one and and continues long after the reader has finished the novel. A brilliant and soul-searching departure from McInerney-Whiteford's first novel, Burning Down the House, this reader is overcome by the intelligence, beauty, grace, and wit that shine forth from Dog People, and is increasingly illuminated in McInerney-Whiteford's fiction. More, please!