Sarah And Zoey

From award-winning author, Linda Watkins, comes a story of two women, from different walks of life, and the one dog who loved them both.... A feature writer for the Boston Globe, Sarah Palmer had it all – a beautiful apartment, a great job, and a family she adored. A thousand miles away, Mindy Sue Watson didn’t have it so good. Trapped in a marriage to an abusive alcoholic, her only pleasure was in tossing a ball to a skinny dog she’d adopted from the local shelter. Sarah & Zoey is the tale of these two women and the one remarkable dog who saved them both. It is a story of the power of unconditional love. "Three disparate lives - two human, one canine - whirl through a circle of circumstance that is poignant, involving, and especially moving to dog lovers who want a novella about crisis, escape, and recovery. Sarah and Zoey can be read in short segments, so it's perfect for busy fiction readers who want high drama packed into succinct chapters. The mechanics whereby loss and endangered lives heal are nicely portrayed in a winning story that emphasizes hope and offers an involving tale dog lovers will relish.

Sarah And Zoey (Literary Fiction)

By Linda Watkins

Argon Press

ISBN #978-1944815066

Price $7.97 (Paperback)

Price $2.99 (Kindle)

Rating 5-Stars

“For Dog Lovers of Any Age”

Two women thousands of miles apart are brought into the life of a rescue dog named Zoey. Sarah Palmer, a writer for The Globe loses her husband and son in a storm on a boat, leaving her broken and not wanting to live. Mindy Sue Watson is married to an alcoholic and wife beater. Unable to leave him it ends in a final beating that almost takes her life until her dog, Zoey comes to her rescue. She flees the house but her husband catches the dog and drags it behind his pickup, almost killing it. Mindy reaches the hospital, and a neighbor calls the police about the man dragging the dog. Mindy’s husband is arrested while she goes through several years of recovery. Zoey is turned over to the Humane Society and ends up where Sarah learns of the animal’s history. She adopts Zoey and the next two years she gets her life back with the dog’s help. The writer in her wants to learn more about the dog’s past history and discovers the story of Mindy Sue. She takes Zoey on a road trip to visit his first “momma”, only to discover Mindy living in a protective home, and her husband released from prison early. Bringing Zoey back to Mindy Sue puts them all in danger once more.

This was a wonderful story about a dog that helps two women in danger. It saves the life of one, and helps the other want to live again after great loss. For animal lovers, especially dog lovers, this story will tug at your heart. It’s a short novella, and fast read, but the story moves smoothly, and keeps the reader interested to the last page. Highly recommended.

Tom Johnson

Author of WIRE DOG STORIES

Ohio

On one fateful summer night in 2013, four former classmates converge on the rust belt town where they grew up, each of them with a mission, all of them haunted by regrets, secrets, lost loves. There's Bill Ashcraft, an alcoholic, drug-abusing activist whose fruitless ambitions have taken him from Cambodia to Zuccotti Park to New Orleans, and now back to "The Cane" with a mysterious package strapped to the underside of his truck; Stacey Moore, a doctoral candidate reluctantly confronting the mother of her former lover; Dan Eaton, a shy veteran of three tours in Iraq, home for a dinner date with the high school sweetheart he's tried to forget; and the beautiful, fragile Tina Ross, whose rendezvous with the captain of the football team triggers the novel's shocking climax.

At once a murder mystery and a social critique, Ohio ingeniously captures the fractured zeitgeist of a nation through the viewfinder of an embattled Midwestern town and offers a prescient vision for America at the dawn of a turbulent new age.

Ohio (Literary Fiction)

By Stephen Markley

Simon & Schuster

ISBN 978-1501174483

Price $11.59 (Paperback)

Price $12.99 (Kindle)

512 Pages

Rating 3-Stars

Praised as a Literary National Bestseller, this huge tome takes place overnight in an Ohio town when several former classmates gather to relive old memories, or reveal old secrets. 

The characters never appealed to me, nor did the story ever give me interest in the plot, and I found the writing boring. The publisher sent me a copy of the book for an honest review, and if I’m honest I must confess it was a waste of my time reading this. It may be classified as literary fiction, but it will never be a classic in literature.

Tom Johnson

Author of CARNIVAL OF DEATH