I Have Heard You Calling in the Night: A Memoir

Novelist Healy was a raging, brawling drunk until, on a whim, he adopted a Doberman pinscher puppy he named Martin. He nursed Martin through illness and wounds; Martin in turn stood guard over him while he lay passed out in fields. Their bond, and the slight but persistent duty of caring for Martin enabled Healy to very fitfully begin to recover from his alcoholism and propensity to violence and gently nudged him toward an understanding of himself and God. Healy embeds the story in a memoir of his life in the slums of Glasgow, his relationship with his parents, his conflicted attitude toward the church and his many loves, from a youthful encounter with a whore with a heart of gold to a mature affair with a boss who fired him after he makes clear that Martin is more important to him than she is. "It was not right that a man should need a dog as much as I had needed him," Healy acknowledges, but he makes no apologies that "for whatever reason, my best pal possessed four legs instead of two." In Healy's heartfelt prose, this eccentric friendship becomes the core of a moving meditation on the mysterious nature of redemption. (Oct.)