The Speckled Beauty

A Dog and His People

By: Rick Bragg

Narrated by: Rick Bragg

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • From the best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of All Over but the Shoutin', the warmhearted and hilarious story of how his life was transformed by his love for a poorly behaved, half-blind stray dog.

Speck is not a good boy. He is a terrible boy, a defiant, self-destructive, often malodorous boy, a grave robber and screen door moocher who spends his days playing chicken with the Fed Ex man, picking fights with thousand-pound livestock, and rolling in donkey manure, and his nights howling at the moon. He has been that way since the moment he appeared on the ridgeline behind Rick Bragg's house, a starved and half-dead creature, seventy-six pounds of wet hair and poor decisions.

Speck arrived in Rick's life at a moment of looming uncertainty. A cancer diagnosis, chemo, kidney failure, and recurring pneumonia had left Rick lethargic and melancholy. Speck helped, and he is helping, still, when he is not peeing on the rose of Sharon. Written with Bragg's inimitable blend of tenderness and sorrow, humor and grit, The Speckled Beauty captures the extraordinary, sustaining devotion between two damaged creatures who need each other to heal.

Touching, memorable memoir

Seldom does a book evoke such powerful emotions as this one. The reading by the author brought a level of reality to the story. The writing was so simple and yet so powerful. I laughed, cried, wondered, visualized, heard…thoroughly enjoyed every minute.

A true story from Rick Bragg

The speckled Beauty is the story of Rick Bragg's "terrible dog", that wasn't so terrible after all. That doesn't mean the dog, Spek, has changed at all. Only that the people around him have excepted his peculiar ways.
I throughly enjoyed reading and listening to "the Speckled Beauty". it remind me of several dogs we have adopted from an animal shelter, picked up off the road, or off an island on our local lake where some half-wit left him to die one way or another.
"The Speckled Beauty" is also a story of family in the backwoods of Alabama, North East of Birmingham. Where country life can be amazing and old country at the same time.
I high recommend this book.

Outstanding Story for all dog people!

I am a 75-year-old dog person who firmly believes that dogs do have souls. I think this despite what many religious people who are much more knowledgeable than me have to say about that. I believe God put dogs on this earth for needy people! People like me who need and appreciate unconditional love from an animal, one who will listen to their thoughts, complaints, and insecurities and never complain about it. Godspeed to all the wonderful dogs out there, especially those with no people or homes.

The author does an exceptional job of narrating the book.

Rick Bragg is a Southern treasure. He writes eloquently about every day things and makes them sound noble. He can make me laugh out loud and cry in the same paragraph.

Fall in love with the Alabama culture!

Rick has let world see the beauty of the southern culture in its slow, caring way! I laughed at this dog till the tears ran!