lague of participation trophies and helicopter parents, a young boy and girl, Doug and Georgia, work together to rally the neighborhood kids to rescue a litter of abandoned misfit puppies from a wretched neighbor. It is a quirky story written for my grandchildren to pass down the values of my generation, including our missteps. While targeted to middle grade readers, the fifty and over crowd will also enjoy the nostalgic journey. The novel is a work of fiction, but many of the stories are centered around actual events.

Set in South Georgia during the Sixties, the kids live in a poor, religious neighborhood of dual working parents. Doug finds and rescues the first puppy, Albert, while looking for an errant baseball. He has to hide the dog from his parents. Through sheltering Albert, Doug becomes friends with his popular and older neighbor, Savannah Georgia. Georgia is so named because her alcoholic mother filled out the birth certificate one line off. The two become great friends and work together, and with the help of Albert, locate and rescue his remaining litter mates. The wretched neighbors, the Malvados, live down the street, just beyond the ditch. They are an all-male, extended family of no-gooders and truants. The Malvados acquire strays to sell to a dog fighting ring in a neighboring county headed by a deputy sheriff.

The story is funny and light stressing values such as self-reliance, compassion, and integrity but does contain dark undercurrents, providing subtle windows for parents to discuss weighty issues including poverty, domestic abuse, bullying, religion, discrimination and animal abuse.

Enjoy the journey.