A DOG'S WAY HOME

In alternating chapters, Emily Eiden delivers the mountain girl twang of 11-year-old Abby, a spunky delight from Harmony Gap, North Carolina, and Chuck Carrington renders the sure, steady voice of Abby's whip-smart Shetland sheepdog, Tam. We meet the pair as they win an agility championship on the northern end of the Blue Ridge Parkway. A truck accident on the way home separates them, leaving Abby in the hospital and Tam fighting for survival. Both narrators hold their own, so you're never left wishing you were in the dog's story instead of the girl's or vice versa. Listeners will be touched by the close (sometimes psychic) bond between girl and dog as their reunion is thwarted by nature, nasty humans, and Abby's often clueless parents. (But after seven months of struggle, you may begin to think "Home" should be retitled "Give This Poor Dog a Break.") M.M.C. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine [Published: OCTOBER 2012]