Dog Years

Why do dogs speak so profoundly to our inner lives? When Mark Doty decides to adopt a dog as a companion for his dying partner, he finds himself bringing home Beau, a large golden retriever, malnourished and in need of loving care. Beau joins Arden, the black retriever, to complete their family. As Beau bounds back into life, the two dogs become Mark Doty's intimate companions, his solace, and eventually the very life force that keeps him from abandoning all hope during the darkest days. Their tenacity, loyalty, and love inspire him when all else fails.

Dog Years is a remarkable work: a moving and intimate memoir interwoven with profound reflections on our feelings for animals and the lessons they teach us about life, love, and loss. Mark Doty writes about the heart-wrenching vulnerability of dogs, the positive energy and joy they bring, and the gift they bear us of unconditional love.

A book unlike any other, Mark Doty's surprising meditation is radiantly unsentimental yet profoundly affecting. Beautifully written, Dog Years is a classic in the making.

"Evocative, compassionate, a love story both intimate and grand, this is a beautiful book." Amy Hempel

"Dog Years is about dogs, which is to say, it is about everything we cannot talk about. Although Mark Doty manages to write about what he calls 'the unsayable' about our relationships with animals, and about unspeakable times of loss, Dog Years is not a dark book. It is illuminated from within by generous wonder." Louise Erdrich

"Rather amazing...[Doty's] boundless affection is tempered by graceful observations....A profound reflection on hope, and a song of praise for the dead." Kirkus Reviews (starred)

"Its complex formal structure is like memory itself, and its exquisite pace reminds one of nothing so much as a stroll in the park with Fido. Poignant, intelligent, and quite simply superb." Library Journal (starred)

"[An] elegant and elegiac memoir....To be loved by Doty...is to be elevated into a realm of utter glory....Doty's tender yet cogent...observations...transcendently celebrate the essential connection between man and pet." Booklist

"Life-affirming, lyrical, and profoundly affection....Only Mark Doty could have written a dog book (100 percent soul, 0 percent sentimentality) that covers so much ground without ever abandoning its four-footed subjects." Pam Houston, O magazine

"Doty writes unsentimentally but affectingly about the solace and companionship dogs provide, their vulnerability, and the hope and unconditional love they bring into a home." Out Magazine

Both moving and entertaining, Dog Years is the story of two beloved retrievers and is a pointed, perceptive meditation on life, death, and the nature of companionship.

Mark Doty's seven books of poetry and three books of nonfiction prose have been honored with such distinctions as the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/Martha Albrand Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, a Whiting Writers' Award, a Lila Wallace–Reader's Digest Writers' Award, and, in the United Kingdom, the T. S. Eliot Prize. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. He is a professor at the University of Houston and lives in New York City.