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by Maggie Squires (Author)
A Wild Life And A Dog Called Brown opens with a heartfelt 'letter' from my daughter Rose to her beloved dog Brown during their last field season, after a dozen, of working together in the mountains of the Yukon. Brown was a perfect field companion for Rose, a geologist working for the Yukon Geological Survey. While Rose was preoccupied with mapping, Brown was on the look out for bears.
The big black dog also had his fair share of bad habits, too. Among the worst was chasing wildlife and roughing up small dogs. Even so, he was a once-in-a-lifetime mountain dog.
Before Brown, Rose didn't consider herself a dog person. Neither did her dad, Ted, who grew up in the frontier town of Fort Nelson, not long after its transformation from a trading post to stop on the Alaska Highway.
I met Ted in 1977 after a scandalous departure from my well-heeled family in North Carolina which led me to a wilderness outpost in the heart of the Northern Rocky Mountains. We would go on to raise three daughters in the rough and remote wilderness of the Liard River in northeastern British Columbia.
In 2010, twenty-eight-year-old Rose headed north to solo-build a log cabin on a plot of family land overlooking Muncho Lake. The unexpected entry of a puppy -- handed off to her by her persistent dad -- led to a spirited companionship that lasted over a decade.
This short book is an exploration of our lives on the land, and how an enthusiastic hound would bring our family together in unexpected ways.
About the Author:
Maggie Squires has a Ph.D. in limnology. Over the last decade, she's studied lakes, large and small, from Wabush Lake in Labrador to St. Mary Lake on Salt Spring Island, to Snap Lake in the Northwest Territories.
In 2007, Maggie arrived on Salt Spring Island by sailboat from Pedder Bay on Vancouver Island and decided to put down anchor. She spends summers gardening and cycling on Salt Spring, and winters in the Yukon, cross-country skiing, writing and visiting with her four daughters, four grandsons, and a granddaughter.
On Salt Spring and outside Whitehorse, Maggie's home is a simple dwelling with a wood stove and big windows that look out upon forest. A Wild Life And A Dog Called Brown is her first book.
