The story centres around a collie who lived with a family in a tenement building in a deprived area of a small rural town called Brentwood.The collie becomes overlooked within her human family and ultimately finds herself on the streets forced to fend for herself. She is picked up by the dog catchers and placed in an animal shelter where she waits for her human family to collect her but in vain.She eventually catches the eye of a retired nurse seeking a dog companion and is adopted by her.Her new found family has encountered grief through the premature and tragic death of two members of their family through a drink driving accident. The dog becomes a source of healing and comfort to the various members of the family including Kevin Beth’s ten year old great nephew a hyperactive but socially inadequate youngster whose life the dog saves and the bond between boy and dog becomes inseparable.The dog has a part to play in all the lives of this family where hospital life and farm life plays a great part where hurt and woundedness is healed where faith turns tragedy into triumph. Beth’s voluntary work in the hospital where she trained involves her faithful collie in serving in the cancer ward as a ‘working’ dog bringing charm and delight to severely ill children.Beth also comes under the magical spell of her four legged friend when she finds love in her later years.
عن المؤلف
My name is Elizabeth Clark.I was born in a small town called Coatbridge twelve miles from Glasgow in Scotland.In my teens I worked in a shoe store then a factory.I felt a call towards missions. I prepared myself by doing a two year course in a Bible College in London.I then took up a post in a children’s home for broken and disturbed young people which proved a challenge.My career ended after twenty five years when I took early retirement. During my retirement I adopted a collie from an animal shelter who had been found straying in a local town. Because of her colouring of black and tan I named her Amber. As a single lady living on my own the dog became a wonderful companion over the years and became my inspiration in writing A Dog’s Tale’. My curiosity was aroused wondering about the ‘history’ of this lovely animal with such fetching traits and good nature and how she could have been abandoned by her previous owners triggered my imagination.The olny factual part of the story was she was found in a shelter and adopted by a retired single lady namely myself. In April 2012. Amber died at the grand age of nearly eighteen years sadly missed but a novel inspired by her lives on.