Brian McGrory, Boston Globe columnist and author of several political thrillers set in Boston, here offers a memoir, Buddy, the tale of (among other things) an unlikely alliance between man and bird. Shifting back and forth in time with several shorter vignettes tying into the larger story of how McGrory met his fiancée, Pam, and her two girls, the book opens on the newly formed family's first morning in their new house in suburban Massachusetts. The day begins with the screeching of a rooster named Buddy. It is immediately clear that McGrory and the rooster have an antagonistic relationship--one that makes the human feel like an outsider in his own home and within his new family. There follows a how-did-I-get-here? moment that anyone can relate to. In his case, McGrory tells us, it began with a dog.
From the moment McGrory lays eyes on Harry, a golden retriever pup shivering in his crate at Logan Airport to a decade later when he begins a relationship with Harry's vet, Pam, to meeting Buddy, McGrory engages the reader. The females, who dote upon Buddy, are his flock, and Buddy soon becomes the metaphor for everything Brian finds uncomfortable and alien about his new life. But relationships bring compromise, and despite his dismay at discovering that chickens can live up to 15 years, he even comes to an understanding approaching empathy for Buddy, who is also often out of his element. Ultimately, McGrory realizes that both he and Buddy are home and that all is right with the world. For now. --Debra Ginsberg, author