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Novel Sets Standard For Fiction About Dogs

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By ROGER K. MILLER

The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 24, 2008

"The Story of Edgar Sawtelle," by David Wroblewski (Ecco, $25.95)

In "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle" David Wroblewski has written a terrific novel wherein chance too often is the deciding factor. Although its 562-page length may seem daunting, it is by no means wearisome and is necessary to its telling. A debut novel such as this does not come along often.

Edgar Sawtelle is the only child of Gar and Trudy Sawtelle, operators of a family dog-breeding business on a farm in northern Wisconsin on the edge of the Chequamegon Forest, near where the author grew up. Born in 1958, unable to speak (but not deaf), Edgar uses sign-language not only with his parents but with the dogs, one of the many subtle paranormal and spooky elements - including ghosts - that add to the attraction of the novel.

Edgar, obviously, is not an ordinary boy, and these are not ordinary dogs. The business was started by his late grandfather, John Sawtelle, whose principle of dog-breeding is nothing like that of standard breeders.

In a method continued by his son and grandson, John used mutts and strays - dogs he simply liked for valuable characteristics he saw in them. He bred not from specific traits in pedigreed animals, as others do, but from what he perceived as the "finest individuals," believing that then the excellent traits will emerge in the breeding line.

At one point not too far into the novel, Edgar thinks that his grandfather's vision - naïve and wrong-headed in the opinion of other dog-breeders - might have come to pass. You might think so, too, because Wroblewski meticulously describes their training, designed to make them canine companions that don't merely obey, but understand why they should obey.

It is a largely self-contained world, but a pleasant existence until, in the early 1970s when Edgar is about 14, his long-lost Uncle Claude - his father's brother - turns up at the farm. Actually, Claude makes his first appearance, unidentified, in a creepy prologue set in South Korea in 1952 involving a mysterious, highly poisonous substance.

Echoes of this short prologue will resound again and again. With the entrance of Claude the novel takes on its background theme of "Hamlet." Edgar's father dies under peculiar circumstances, his mother takes up with his uncle, and Edgar begins to suspect his uncle of murder.

When Edgar accidentally and tangentially becomes involved in the death of a friend of the family, he lights out in panic for the Chequamegon, accompanied by three of the dogs. In the last 100 pages or so, the plot ratchets up into a tension-filled thriller.

Along the way there are some delightful bits and pieces. For example, check out the Hot Mix Duck Massacre, pages 431-32.

Roger K. Miller, a former book-review editor of the Milwaukee Journal, is a freelance writer and reviewer in Menomonee Falls, Wis.

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