The Last Days of Dogtown: A Novel [Paperback]

 

 

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Dogtown is a dying town at the heart of Cape Ann, Massachusetts. Many people left to make better lives for themselves. Those remaining inhabitants are the poor: widows, orphans, spinsters, scoundrels, whores, drunkards and blacks, called freed slaves. There are even stray dogs who have made their way into town, and have made Dogtown their home.

It is the winter of 1814, ABRAHAM Wharf has died. It was CORNELIUS Finson aka Black Neal, who found Abraham with a long knife in his hand. Cornelius carried the corpse to EASTER Carter's home, because it was the largest home in Dogtown and the people could come there to pay their final respects. Abraham was placed in the corner of the parlor, with yellow gingham cloth covering his face and his chest. Easter then sends Cornelius to find relatives in town to carry Abraham Wharf's body back to Gloucester for a Christian burial.

JUDY Rhines, a poor lonely spinster is the first to arrive. Greyling, a stray dog is her best friend, She is also a good friend of Easter. Judy goes to see Abraham, lifts up the cloth and wonders why there is a curious lack of blood on his throat. Shouldn't his collar be soaked in blood? Shouldn't his hands be stained, his sleeves caked? Perhaps Easter had cleaned it up OR did she?
RUTH arrives and wherever she goes she brings mystery. She is a coffee-colored African who wears trousers and a cap, has never been seen in a dress and prefers the name of "John Woodman." However, she is known as Black Ruth. She is a stonemason and lives in Easter's attic. Judy is curious and hopes to one day find out more of Ruth's story. Also, there is Abraham's sister MARY Lurvey, who can't stop weeping. There is OLIVER, twelve years old, accompanied by his peculiar AUNT TAMMY, often called a witch and is ill-humored. The door opens and in comes MRS. STANLEY, owner of the town brothel and her grandson, SAMMY. She brings with her a bottle of Rum in memory of Master Wharf, to go with Easter's cabbage and potatoes. When Sammy first arrived to Dogtown, he had a note pinned to his coat. No one knew who this child was, but Mrs. Stanley introduced him as her daughter's son. No one knew she had a daughter and no one believed her. Finally, a door opens and Abraham's two grandsons have arrived to pick up their grandfather.

It was over. No one would be going to Abraham Wharf's funeral. The poor winter roads wouldn't allow it. It was time for everyone to return to their crumbling houses to sleep off the effects of the rum. Dogtown turned out to bid farewell to Abraham Wharf.

Judy Rhines is a very important character in this book. She is the glue that holds the story together. She is fiercely independent and a lonely soul. She was abandoned by her father, yet in spite of all the difficulties, she strives to make a better life for herself. Is she able to succeed? What happens to all the other folks? There are lots of twists and turns, which will hold your interest from beginning to end.

Anita Diamant's book is beautifully written and full of emotion and sensitivity. In her writing, you can feel the pain and loneliness and yet, as hard as life was, the townsfolk never gave up.

I enjoyed this book immensely and give it my highest recommendation of FIVE OUT OF FIVE STARS.

It's rumored and many of the people in Gloucester, Massachusetts believe the folks over in Dogtown, a town that has been named for the pack of almost wild dogs who run free in the town that is hour's walk away, are witches, but they're not. They are simply outcasts, black folks, prostitutes, widows, drunks and the like. Folks they'd look down on, folks just trying to get by, dealing with the daily evils one might find if you are not gentry in 1814.

Dogtown is a small farming village by Cape Ann that failed to make it and so winds up being a town for those on the bottom rungs of society who mired in poverty or just plain lazy make do by selling berries or a brew the make from twigs and roots. However, their betters do not admire their endeavors, instead they make fun of them, call them trasheaters. In Dogtown those who can, get out.

We meet some of dogtown's residents at a funeral, like Ruth a black stonemason who happens to dress like a man (remember this is the early 1800s); a madam that is raising her grandson in her brothel; a couple of lesbian prostitutes among others; but the mourner who really grabs the reader's attention is Judy Rhines, a poor woman who had been abandoned by her father when she was eight years old. Judy is a sad and lonely woman who once had an affair with a freed slave, but she was forced to end the affair and now her heart only beats half the time. Her only companion now is one of the town dogs.

THE LAST DAYS OF DOGTOWN is a character study of the people mentioned above and others that will both take you back to a place in time where life was hard, sometimes cruel, often unfair and it make you glad you live when and where you do. Anita Diamant's people are sometimes too real, so real you want to cry, so real you will be thinking about them long after you finish this gorgeous story. Five stars from me.

Review Submitted by Captain Katie Osborne

The story opens up with the folks of Dogtown sitting together in Easter Carter's house. The people of the village had come to grieve, some to snoop, and some to stare in awe at the body of Abraham Wharf. It seems Abraham has committed suicide but lying on the floor by the window, no one can figure out why his body is not covered in blood if he cut his own throat?

Judy Rhines, one of the townswomen lifted the corner piece of yellow gingham that had been placed over his face and chest to wonder again where the blood is? Did someone clean him up?

The Village of Dogtown has quite the sort of oddities as far as its residents go. There is Black Ruth, a woman who dresses like a man and labours as stonemason; Mrs. Stanley, a haughty madam whose grandson, Sammy, comes of age in her brothel; Oliver Younger, who is fortunate to survive a horrible childhood at the hands of his aunt; and Cornelius Finson, a freed slave. Smack dab in the middle of all this is our beloved Judy Rhines, a brutally independent woman with a deep lonely soul who tries to build a life for herself against unimaginable odds.

You see, long ago Dogtown was a proud settlement inhabited by fine people. Slowly it turned into a collection of broken huts and hovels lived in by mostly spinsters and widows without children. Stuck there in poverty, the town folk laboured in vain to forage a living selling benies and brews made of roots and twigs. For all their hard work at eeking out a living, they were called "trash eaters" and made fun of all over Cape Ann. They said there wasn't anyone left in Dogtown but "...witches and whores." But, Abraham Wharf had made it his life defending their settlement, and he looked upon himself as Dogtown's leader. Abraham was a bitter man.

Life just teems from this novel although we lose some of that life along our way, but we are still left with super-imposed memories of those we've joined in their most troubled states. Superbly crafted and honed with the skill of a steady plot line that is different and complex at best. Ms. Diamant has depicted the story of Dogtown and its people with a lyrical precision that is hard to find.

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