Synopses & Reviews
In these experimental lyric essays, Lowrey explores queerness, PTSD, anxiety, and created family. A framing of Rally Obedience and Dog Agility course maps create a textured story on the page, a hybrid form in which Lowrey recounts a spiritual-like relationship to dogs beginning in childhood, a passion for dog shows fractured in adolescence with a period of homelessness, a service dog, anxiety, and a return to dog sports. This collection transcends Lowrey’s personal relationship with dogs to tell a larger story about healing, loss, trauma, survival, and of course the love (and salvation) of many good dogs.
Review
“Sassafras Lowrey shows us that it is possible to not only re-invent ourselves, but also to gather up and claim the lost pieces of what has always sustained us.” Sandra Gail Lambert, author of A Certain Loneliness
Review
“Merging the mechanics of dog handling courses with the intensely personal story of how relationships with dogs have shaped hir life, Sassafras Lowrey has created a new kind of memoir, both deeply engaging and emotionally devastating.” Michael Thomas Ford, 5-time Lambda Literary Award Winner
Review
“...the book’s heartbreak is beautifully balanced by its close companion: the transcendent joy that comes from working in close partnership with a dog. Serpentine and leap, heel and heal.” Cat Warren, NYT bestselling author of What the Dog Knows: Scent, Science, and the Amazing Ways Dogs Perceive the World
About the Author
Sassafras Lowrey is a straight-edge queer punk who grew up to become the 2013 winner of the Lambda Literary Emerging Writer Award. Hir books Kicked Out, Roving Pack, and Leather Ever After have been honoured by organizations ranging from the National Leather Association to the American Library Association. Sassafras lives and writes in Brooklyn with hir partner and five furry beasts.