The Mountaintop School For Dogs
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015
The place of this novel is an unusual animal sanctuary in a former ski resort: a place of away-ness, a world of its own, where all pasts need repairing for all sorts of futures. In a way, its time is about making a future.
Most of the characters are dogs. When I talked about this novel as I was writing it, and afterward too, people would ask, “Do they, like, speak in words, and have human thoughts?”
No. Setting out to create them–and they come from lives of hardship and unkindness–I had the joy of finding out they could be characters, equal to any human one, expressing themselves individually in their dog-ness: Shadow the hound mix, Alfie the greyhound, Tara the Rottweiler, Josie the “small mix,” Hank the lab/pit bull, Boomer the golden, Dora the Scottie. My own three dogs have given me plenty of material, especially since I had to learn to home-school one of them, a rescue too unstable and aggressive for a class. I was the one who was actually the learner. He taught me how to teach him. Now he’s the most sociable and expressive creature I know, but it wasn’t easy or always fun to get there.
I always miss characters when I’ve finished a novel, in a sort of mourning. But I never missed anyone as much as these dogs.
The main humans are Evie, Mrs. Auberchon, and Giant George: a woman in her early twenties on a journey, and a woman of middle age and a teenage boy connected to The Sanctuary. They’re rescues too.
Rescue. Heal, somehow. Find that thing we know of as hope. This is a school, too. All my years teaching creative writing classes and workshops came into play, as fuel, as experience changed to another dimension, to fiction. Evie becomes a student of something totally new to her, and through many, many mistakes, some of them funny, like in a comedy sketch, she becomes someone who learns to use and trust her own intuitions, her own style, her own sense of always having to keep learning, and to pass along what she knows so that someone else can come into their own, too. Because that’s how it works, no matter if it’s humans or animals.
Praise & Reviews
• Indie Next Selection, August 2014
• People Pick, People Magazine
• Featured in “New and Noteworthy,” USA Today
• Featured in “New and Notable,” Amazon
• Cover feature, Advance Magazine (Ingram), August 2014
• Featured in Buzzing About Books, The Book Club Cookbook
“Dog lovers rejoice! Cooney has crafted a feel-good, canine-filled tale of cross-generational friendship, healing, and solidarity.”
—Publishers Weekly
“What Ellen Cooney captures so brilliantly here is the psychological and emotional similarities between dogs and people –the way both respond to trauma and pain, and the way love and kindness can heal even the deepest wounds. The Mountaintop School for Dogs is a celebration of the bond that has brought canines and humans together for thousands of years. This book will grab your heart and not let go.”
—John Grogan, author of Marley & Me: Life and Love With the World’s Worst Dog
“Cooney’s writing style is completely her own, lively, inventive, and fun to read. Do not miss this remarkable novel.”
—Indie Next
“Sure to captivate the reader… a charming novel about damaged souls looking for a forever home.”
—Shelf Awareness
“Could easily be a memoir of a person who reached the bottom and has been given the opportunity to work and fight her way back to daylight. In the end, it is a book about hope, how there is always a ray of hope.”
—Book Reporter
“A multitude of self-help and how-to books could never deliver what this brilliant novel accomplishes. Ellen Cooney understands love – love as in discovering and learning to accept the strengths and weaknesses of ourselves and others…Highly recommended.”
—Literary Aficionado
“A richly descriptive writing style…the metaphor of reaching the mountain for enlightenment holds true.”
—Story Circle Book Review
“Must-read…a moving and joyous romp…All the dogs are wonderfully, fully drawn characters. This is a brilliantly crafted, uplifting book.”
—The Bark
“Cooney’s latest novel is both a joyful romp and a thoughtful meditation. The author’s delicate touch with the pain and trauma endured by abused animals and her sensitive portrayal of dedicated rescuers send a powerful message. Love is a great teacher, and we are all a little unadoptable. Readers of Garth Stein and Carolyn Parkhurst will adore this title.”
—Library Journal
“As knowledgeable as she is about the world of dog rescue and rehabilitation, Cooney (Lambrusco, 2008) is equally empathic in her treatment of a scarred and scared young woman.”
—Booklist
“Dogs were bred by us to serve us in practical ways, but then dogs took it on themselves to serve us most profoundly by healing our broken hearts. Ellen Cooney understands this, and is the kind of keenly observational writer who can detail the path to healing only dogs can provide. A delightful read for all of us who can’t imagine life without dogs.”
—W. Bruce Cameron, author of A Dog’s Purpose and A Dog’s Journey
“A jubilant, wise celebration of love, reciprocal between human and canine, in ways profound, moving, and soul saving. Readers will long remember the central humans in this tale—Evie, Mrs. Auberchon, and Giant George—along with the exquisitely drawn cast of rescued dogs who, in their own delightful, mysterious, and silent ways, heal their rescuers’ wounds. Ellen Cooney has written a funny, joyous, and heartrending book that insists intelligence and kindness must win out over ignorance and cruelty. Exploring the human and canine hearts with equal doses of wisdom and wit, Mountaintop is surely a book to be read and reread, preferably with your dog nestled by your side.”
—Connie May Fowler, author of Remembering Blue
“The real genius of this story is in all the things it doesn’t tell you, all the things it assumes you already know—and turns out, you do!—which leaves much more space to be taken up by what really matters: the marvelous canines. Any dog-lover—any person-lover—will be moved (nearly to the point of slobbering) by this warm, funny, heart-expanding book.”
—Pam Houston, author of Sight Hound and Contents May Have Shifted
“A wise, engaging meditation on dogs, love, and recovery from pain. Come. Sit. Read!”
—Lily King, author of Euphoria and Father Of The Rain
“A young woman who knows she’s lost, and an older one who doesn’t think she is, meet a slew of castaway dogs at a snowy mountaintop sanctuary, and discover what they didn’t even know they were looking for. A charming novel about overcoming the past and finding meaning and purpose in the present.
—Susan Richards, author of Chosen By A Horse