The Wolf in the Parlor

When my dog Ellie died a couple of years ago, I was stunned at how bereft I felt, and how long my grief lingered. “She’s just a dog,” I kept telling myself, although inside I felt like I had lost a treasured member of our family.

The Wolf in the Parlor by Jon Franklin somehow made my reaction not only understandable, but appropriate. The bond between humans and canines, according to Franklin, goes back some 12,000 years to a time when both species lost a significant quantity of brain matter, yet survived and flourished because of their interdependence upon each other. We NEED dogs in our lives!

I’ve been a fan of Franklin for a long time, since I read his short story “Mrs. Kelly’s Monster” when I was a student at UCSC studying science communication. In Monster, Franklin takes the reader inside the operating room as Mrs. Kelly is undergoing surgery for brain aneurysms. His extraordinary story telling allows you to actually feel the tension in the room as the surgeon works.

I like to think of The Wolf in the Parlor as a love story. When Franklin blurts out a proposal of marriage to his girlfriend, Lynn, she responds “Does this mean that I can have a puppy?” Thus begins the loving relationship between Franklin and Charlie, a standard poodle of all things.

“… this whole business, the marriage, the puppy – it was a slippery slope… a puppy changes one’s life, not with dramatic moments but rather with a tide of small things…”

“Charlie, in his doggy way, touched something deep in my mind – something I couldn’t articulate but that was there all the same. I itched to know, the way you do when you find yourself in possession of an answer but you don’t know what the question was.”

This fascinating and heartfelt book chronicles Franklin’s search for the questions and the answers. Since I landed the task of choosing a book for the next Wistar Authors Series Event, I selected this book and was lucky enough to have Franklin agree to appear. The sold-out event is next week and I can’t wait!