My name is Dean Hickok, Sergeant, late of the U.S. Marines. I authored this work, though I did not create its people nor their stories. These, you will come to find, I inherited.

The book and its people become known to me because I nearly ran down a dog one night on a back road during a Kentucky rainstorm.

The dog, it turned out, had been made to suffer and left to die in a crate. But his will to survive his determination to overcome the many cruelties inflicted upon him, and the ultimate and unabated goodness that abided in him even afterwards, are the actual reason these pages bearing my name exists at all.

I was profoundly wounded of heart and empty of purpose as I drove through the Kentucky darkness that night. I had recently returned from Iraq, the lone survivor of my squad, when my headlights bore through a sweeping rain the find him there stumbled and fallen.

So begins what is being described as “A landmark American work of heart” … that was born from a journey the author took across this country to collect stories about the dog and man.

(From Publisher).

 
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