This edition of Dog O’Day’s book reviews looks at Phyllis Reynolds Naylor’s 1991 middle-grade novel Shiloh.
Marty Preston’s family is poor. Not “rock-poor,” as Marty points out, but pretty near it, because they have to help take care of an ill elderly relative.
So there’s no way they can adopt a dog.
This is the central dilemma of Phyllis Reynolds Naylor’s classic Shiloh, set in rural northern West Virginia in the late 1980s.
Their neighbor Judd Travers, who has a history of mistreating his animals, loses a timid new beagle, whom Marty comes across and decides to secretly adopt, feeding “Shiloh” table scraps.
When a neighbor’s German Shepherd attacks Shiloh, then Marty’s family learns that he’s keeping a dog, and eventually, through the grapevine that is rural living, Judd finds out, too.
They work out a compromise: Marty will work two weeks for Judd, and in return he can keep Judd’s beagle.
Shiloh is written in first-person narration, and Marty’s grammar is awful, which is somewhat to be expected, as he is 11 and lives in the country – so he writes just like he speaks. It’s authentic and adds greatly to the emotion, as much of this complex work revolves around gray ethical issues and Marty’s internal debates about how far is too far to rescue a creature in need (he would say Hotel for Dogs is too far).
Marty’s roaming through the woods, and the whole tone in general, is a throwback to the protagonists of Frank Gipson’s Old Yeller or Wilson Rawls’s Summer of the Monkeys and Where the Red Fern Grows.
It’s a thoughtful read that requires much pondering to sort out the issues raised, and treats the world accurately as it occurs.
Shiloh has three sequels, also written by Naylor: 1996’s Shiloh Season, 1997’s Saving Shiloh, and 2015’s A Shiloh Christmas.
It was made into a 1997 film starring Michael Moriarty (Pale Rider, Law & Order) as Ray, Ann Dowd (The Handmaid’s Tale) as Lou and Scott Wilson (The Walking Dead) as Judd. Two sequels were made, 1999’s Shiloh 2: Shiloh Season and 2006’s Saving Shiloh.
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