About this book
Laird: Between Him and the Dark came from grief, but it is not only a book about loss. It is about companionship, witness, survival, and the quiet ways an animal can become part of the structure that holds a person to the world. I have written speculative fiction, environmental fiction, and stories that look outward toward systems, futures, technologies, and the fragile planet we share. This book turns inward. It is the story of one dog, one man, one small old house, and the bond that formed in the ordinary hours most people never see.
The experience behind this book is lived experience. Laird was my rough collie, my road companion, my shadow, my marketing manager, my witness, and, in ways I did not fully understand until after he was gone, one of the living presences that kept me connected to the world. Writing this book was how I processed his sudden loss. It came in his voice, or as close as I could come to the voice of a dog I knew through years of breath, routine, body language, silence, roads, pain, and trust. I think of it as a documentary in words.
The central theme is not simply that dogs love us. It is that they watch us. They learn our patterns. They know when the room changes, when the hand goes empty, when the door needs opening, when the body needs movement, and when silence has become dangerous. Laird was not only beside me. He stood, again and again, between me and the dark.
I hope readers come away with a deeper respect for the emotional lives of the animals who share our homes, and for the people whose attachment to them may be one of the last threads holding them steady. This book is for anyone who has loved an animal deeply, grieved one suddenly, or understood that a pet is never “just a pet.” It is also for readers, educators, and librarians interested in grief, creative nonfiction, human-animal bonds, animal narration, and the ways personal truth can sometimes be carried most honestly through an imagined voice.
