Last week I finished reading The Dog Master. Right now I am reading Overstory, which I hope to finish tomorrow. However, I will wait till tomorrow to write about Overstory. The Dog Master was a book I really took to–it makes me think I should read the book it was compared to, Clan of the Cave Bear. I can’t say why I never have: a friend even loaned it to me. Anyway, the tale of The Dog Master is about two tribes who domesticated a wolf into a dog, and the triangles of love that exist in each tribe, caused by the practice of arranged marriages. I liked the pre-Historical fiction at the heart of the book, but I also loved the characters.
One striking character was the crippled boy at the center of the book whose mother would not let him be killed despite his disability, and who was the particular male to domesticate the Wolf into the Dog–named for his late brother. His mother’s greatest tragedy was that she did not get to marry the man she loved. He was, so the women’s council decided, to marry another woman so he could be the tribe’s Headman. At the heart of the other tribe in the book was an even more tragic tale: the Headman picked his daughter to marry his son. The marriage was never consummated. Eventually, the Headman of the second tribe runs into the first Dog Master (the crippled boy) and he joined their tribe, to be followed by the other members of the tribe he had been ostracized from at last.
I have probably already given away too many spoilers; I will not say more. I only add that I may read some of the other “Dog” books by W. Bruce Cameron. I strongly urge the reader of this Blog to do the same.