The Speckled Beauty: A Dog and His People

By Rick Bragg

Book Overview

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER - From the best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of All Over but the Shoutin', the warmhearted and hilarious story of how his life was transformed by his love for a poorly behaved, half-blind stray dog.

Speck is not a good boy. He is a terrible boy, a defiant, self-destructive, often malodorous boy, a grave robber and screen door moocher who spends his days playing chicken with the Fed Ex man, picking fights with thousand-pound livestock, and rolling in donkey manure, and his nights howling at the moon. He has been that way since the moment he appeared on the ridgeline behind Rick Bragg's house, a starved and half-dead creature, seventy-six pounds of wet hair and poor decisions.

Speck arrived in Rick's life at a moment of looming uncertainty. A cancer diagnosis, chemo, kidney failure, and recurring pneumonia had left Rick lethargic and melancholy. Speck helped, and he is helping, still, when he is not peeing on the rose of Sharon. Written with Bragg's inimitable blend of tenderness and sorrow, humor and grit, The Speckled Beauty captures the extraordinary, sustaining devotion between two damaged creatures who need each other to heal.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0525658815
• ISBN13: 9780525658818
• Release Date: September 2021
• Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.82 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Good Book. Not his best

Rick Bragg is perhaps the best American author living today. His unique storytelling ability and style is unparalleled. This book, written after a battle w his health, shows the effects of that health scare. It's a good story but lacking in that unique Bragg insight and humor. Worth the read of course and still better than 95 percent of what is being written today.

Great Book!

I have read this book over and over at least a dozen times! It was just wonderful! A dog and his people. From the very beginning when "Speck" came to them, to the very end, it was funny, sad, happy, exciting...so many words to say. If you are looking for a book about a dog and the family that took him in you will love this true story!