The Dogs of March

New York: Penguin Books, 1980. Paperback. Near Fine. His life had come to this: save a few deer from the jaws of dogs. He was a small man sent to perform a small task. Howard Elman is a man whose internal landscape is as disordered as his front yard, where native New Hampshire birches mingle with a bullet-riddled washer, abandoned bathroom fixtures, and several junk cars. Howard, anti-hero of this first novel in Ernest Hebert's highly acclaimed Darby series, is a mixture too. Howard's battle against encroaching change symbolizes the class conflict between indigenous Granite Staters scratching out a living and citified immigrants with "college degrees and big bank accounts." Like the winter-weakened deer threatened by the dogs of March -- the normally docile house pets whose instincts arouse them to chase and kill for sport -- Howard, too, is sorely beset. "A Brilliant Book." -- The New York Times. "The book rises or falls on the strength of Howard Elman, and this man could hold up a house. By turns tormented, funny, poignant and appalling, he lodges in the memory - and successfully launches the career of Ernest Hebert." --New York Times Book Review Author Biography -- "I never set out to create my own genre, complete with derogatory phrase, but when I look over my career and my writing interests it all boils down to Hick Lit. I write mainly about working class rural people at risk, probably because of the way I grew up, in New Hampshire. My father was a factory worker, my mother a nurse; they spoke Canadian French in the house. I love working people. The guys who collect garbage, the women who take care of old people in nursing homes, the wait people, the ditch diggers and lumber jacks and fishers, the taxi drivers and maids: they're the backbone of America. I think one reason that writing is so important to me is that I don't think that well. I have to write to know what I know and sometimes even what I feel. Writing is my conduit to understanding. My interest in novel writing is the interior world of the characters. Everyone has two dramas in their lives, the drama on the outside--how we relate to our loved one, our jobs, our friends, our enemies--and the drama on the inside--how we relate to that steamy, dreamy on-going nut-case story in our heads. When the story in the head comes into conflict with the story in the outside, well, that's a problem for this novelist. You can catch me in greater detail on my web site, which is pretty simple, since I made it myself. Just google my name. Book is near fine, doesn't appear to have been read. Lower front corner has a mild crease on the very tip. Inside covers are tan and the pages are tanning.