Product Description

A poignant and unforgettable tale of love, loss, and moving on . . . with the help of one not-so-little dog

Rocky's husband Bob was just forty-two when she discovered him lying cold and lifeless on the bathroom floor . . . and Rocky's world changed forever. Quitting her job, chopping off all her hair, she leaves Massachusetts—reinventing her past and taking a job as Animal Control Warden on Peak's Island, a tiny speck off the coast of Maine and a million miles away from everything she's lost. She leaves her career as a psychologist behind, only to find friendship with a woman whose brain misfires in the most wonderful way and a young girl who is trying to disappear. Rocky, a quirky and fallible character, discovers the healing process to be agonizingly slow.

But then she meets Lloyd.

A large black Labrador retriever, Lloyd enters Rocky's world with a primitive arrow sticking out of his shoulder. And so begins a remarkable friendship between a wounded woman and a wounded, lovable beast. As the unraveling mystery of Lloyd's accident and missing owner leads Rocky to an archery instructor who draws her in even as she finds every reason to mistrust him, she discovers the life-altering revelation that grief can be transformed . . . and joy does exist in unexpected places.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10589 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-01
• Released on: 2007-04-24
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

From Publishers Weekly
In her second novel, Sheehan switches genres from her debut historical about Sojourner Truth to a contemporary tale of grief featuring Rocky Pelligrino, a woman reeling from her husband's death. After her husband dies of a heart attack, Rocky leaves behind her career as a psychologist in the Berkshire Mountains and moves to Peak's Island, Maine, taking a job as an Animal Control Warden. Her first catch is a black Lab with an arrow lodged in his shoulder. She takes him in, searches for his owner and tries to solve the mystery behind the arrow's origin. Rocky makes a few friends-anorexic teenage neighbor Melissa and strangely attractive archery instructor Hill Johnson-and her mission takes a surprisingly dark turn after she learns of Cooper's original owners. Dog lovers will adore Sheehan's portrayal of Cooper, who, in contrast to all the human suffering, comprises the bright spot in a melancholy novel.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Jacqueline Sheehan, Ph.D., is a fiction writer and essayist. She is a New Englander through and through, but spent twenty years living in the western states of Oregon, California, and New Mexico doing a variety of things, including house painting, freelance photography, newspaper writing, clerking in a health food store, and directing a traveling troupe of high school puppeteers. She is currently the fiction editor for Patchwork Journal, an online journal sponsored by Patchwork Farm, an internationally based writing center. Jacqueline teaches workshops on writing and the combination of yoga and writing.

Customer Reviews

More Than Grief
Within the first ten pages of this book, I knew Bob, I knew Rocky, I understood their marriage, and I felt her palpable grief at his death.

And then she got better... bit by bit.

This is a story of getting better. Rocky has a very Rocky path to health. Along the way, she and some others rescue each other. Melissa (a girl with some mental issues), Tess (a woman with some physical issues), and a dog named Lloyd are the central casting in this story, and they all tell the story, and they all heal each other.

It may seem like typical chick lit - in fact there is even an evil man in the background. But there are some great male characters here, too, not the least being Bob, mostly in memory, but the idea that good men exist is quite obvious.

I liked the way some chapters switched voice. I liked the underlying mystery, but most of all I liked the healing. A very good read.

(*)>

Good for the heart and soul!
What a wonderful book! I couldn't put it down. The characters were constantly evolving and wonderful.

Any animal lover will completely gobble up this book, but even those not so familiar with our furry friend's charms will find nothing but gems within the 278 pages of this book.

The main character, Rocky, as she is appropriately nicknamed, is dealing with a devastating loss. Her husband dies suddenly and she takes a leave of absense from her job to move to a coastal Maine island to work as an animal control warden---a far cry from her normal career as a psychologist. It proves to be one of the best moves she has ever made. As a result, she grows both emotionally, psychologically and even spiritually due to the loving good-naturedness of a lost black lab who is suffering a loss of his own.

This beautiful creature pulls at least 10 people together and splendidly puts them exactly where they should have been a long time ago: on track.

I really wish the book had no ending as I could have continued to read it indefinitely.

I really hope Ms. Sheehan will write a sequel, it was simply that good. I literally cried and was so moved during some of its chapters and I found myself feeling so fulfilled in the end....yet wanting more information of what was to come.

Highly recommended!!!!!

An Extraordinary Book
My father died on February 27 2008. I'm inclined towards reading a lot of vampiric chic lit at this point in my life and just randomly picked this book up at a local bookstore. I had a doctor's appointment last week and didn't want to be reading Kim Harrison's The Outlaw Demon Wails sitting in the doctor's office (it is a very, very fun book but seemed somewhat undignified under the circumstances) so I took Lost and Found with me instead and then almost burst into tears in my gynecologist's office reading the first chapter since my own grief over my father's death is still so close to the surface.

As a dog trainer, I am extremely picky about reading anything written in a dog's voice, always holding it up to my two perfect examples of Watership Down (yeah they're bunnies but for speaking from an animal's POV it just cannot be beaten) and Donald McCaig's Eminent Dogs and Dangerous Men (about dogs in heaven.) The pieces of Lost And Found written from the dog, Loyd's, POV are honestly that good.

I finished the novel as quickly as possible so that I could give it to my mother to read but I cautioned her about the first chapter and put a bookmark at Chapter 2 for her and gave her a brief summary of the events of Chapter 1 so that she didn't wind up crying in her own doctor's office or at the pool or wherever.

Lost And Found is truly an extraordinary book. The characters are very real and well drawn (both human and canine!) and there is true growth for all of them throughout the novel. I know that it spoke to me specifically because of my recent loss and because of my lifetime obsession with dogs but both my mother and I already have people in mind to whom we want to lend or give this book.