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Never Leave the Dogs Behind

A Memoir

ebook
3 of 3 copies available
3 of 3 copies available

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

The author of Nowhere for Very Long continues her story with this deeply honest, moving account of a woman walking the line between independence and isolation when she moves to the Southwest desert with nothing and no one but her four dogs.

In her debut memoir, Nowhere for Very Long, Brianna Madia reflected on her life as a nomad, free to roam some of the most beautiful land in America. Now, in Never Leave the Dogs Behind, the van life adherent faces the unfathomable darkness that comes from a life blown apart, her only solace the support of her dogs.

In the wake of a painful, public divorce and the ensuing fallout, Brianna moves from a pared-down van into a pared-down trailer. She reckons with her decision to be alone in the desert, living on a nine-acre plot of undeveloped land on the dusty outskirts of a small town in Utah, accompanied only by her four precious dogs: Bucket, Dagwood, Birdie, and Banjo. As she grapples with the anger, despair, and delicious freedom that comes from being wholly on her own, Brianna wonders where, exactly, the road less traveled has led her.

A powerful and poignant portrait of rebuilding and surviving, Never Leave the Dogs Behind is about finding the courage to start over when the dream life you thought you were living collapses around your feet.

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    • Library Journal

      November 1, 2023

      In her best-selling memoir Nowhere for Very Long, Madia chronicled her adventures traveling across the American West in her orange van. Here she continues her story, swapping the van for a trailer set outside a small town in the Arizona desert, and grapples with her decisions, with her four dogs by her side. Prepub Alert.

      Copyright 2023 Library Journal

      Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Kirkus

      February 15, 2024
      The author of Nowhere for Very Long returns with a tale about how solitude and dogs can heal wounds. Madia moved to the desert outside Moab, Utah, in May 2020, fleeing from the pain of leaving her husband and a vicious barrage of online harassment. She writes, "A handful of people would make dozens and dozens of anonymous accounts to send what amounted to hundreds of messages" berating her for the breakup and even the accident that almost killed their dog. "People claimed to know things about me, about my life," she continues. "Even if they knew nothing, the internet still provided them the perfect place to pretend they did." She responded by taking refuge in a used van with a vista of "the smoldering ashes of all the bridges I'd burned while I, myself, had been on fire." As in her previous memoir, Madia recounts in raw detail her depression, mania, guilt, anger, and struggle to survive, emotionally and physically. She was not really alone, however. Besides two pet pythons, she lived with four rambunctious dogs. "Sometimes," she admits, "I forgot I wasn't a dog until other people were around." Her life felt chaotic: "I was drinking myself to sleep, starving myself to a silhouette, and living in a relative state of squalor simply because it felt like that's what I deserved." Blaming herself for her husband's alcoholism and the failure of their marriage "had become a form of survival. If everything was my fault, that meant I had some sort of control over it...that meant I could make sense of it, fix it, never let it happen again." Gradually, Madia came to see that she could take care of herself and become someone "who could learn to forgive herself for those times when she didn't know how." An intimate memoir of shattering pain.

      COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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