DoglandLuke Nix and his family - wife Susan, children Little Bit, Christopher, and Digger - have come to Latchahie County, Florida, to open a new tourist attraction: Dogland, where every breed of dog, recognized by the AKC will be on display for visitors. It is 1959. From the first moments we meet them, we know that the Nixes are not going to be quite like the other families in rural Florida. Luke hires Ethorne Hawkins, a black man of indeterminate age, to work at Dogland, and pays him a white man's wages. And Christopher remembers for us the strange events surrounding Digger's birth. How a woman with real leaves growing out of her bark-like hair came to tend his mother, and a man with hairy legs, hooves, and small horns growing from his forehead kept Chris and Little Bit amused. Dogland is a remarkable evocation of a time long past, when the color of a person's skin constrained his every movement, and when America was awakening to a new, more generous spirit. It is also a breathtaking fantasy novel, a delicious work of magic realism that slips effortlessly between the natural and the supernatural. |
