The narrative opens on 10-year-old Marlene, who lives in rural Tennessee during the Great Depression. During summer break, she helps her family with chores, spends time with her 6-year-old brother, Silas, and makes regular trips into town to barter eggs at Mr. Butler’s grocery store. On one of these trips, she encounters a redbone coonhound “cut loose and left behind” by his previous owner. A cruel local, Mr. Arthur, says he would shoot the stray if only the sheriff would let him. Marlene asks her parents if she can bring the dog home, but they refuse due to financial constraints. Still, Marlene fixates on the stray, whom she nicknames “Red,” and after a marked change in Marlene’s mood, her father relents and says Marlene can have the dog. The only problem is catching the skittish canine; Marlene establishes a daily routine of tracking the dog, sticking “right with him like pine sap.” On one of these walks, Red abruptly runs away after spying Mr. Arthur, who threatens to kill the hound. Marlene begins leaving bowls of food scraps outside, and Red begins to eat. One morning, Marlene finds Red incapacitated; she later surmises that Mr. Arthur poisoned the dog. Doc Baker treats Red, and the dog goes home with Marlene. Marlene’s mother is displeased, exclaiming, “that miserable beast is going to have to go!” But when Red performs a heroic act, her opinion changes.
Caruthers effectively immerses readers in 1930s ambiance through the details of Mr. Butler’s grocery store, storytelling locals, and vernacular like “afeared” and “tweren’t.” She paints a vivid image of Red with details like, “He had a kink in his tail, as though it had been broken in a slammed door or gate and had grown back crooked. His ribs stuck out like the slats of an old washboard.” The authors’ unique similes are sensory-rich: Marlene’s skirt “lightly clung to [her] skin like a cicada’s exoskeleton” on a humid day; Mr. Butler lifted her egg basket as though it were “as light as one of Mama’s prize-winning biscuits.” Readers can feel Marlene’s emotions through somatic descriptions like, “My heart thudded like it was going to pop clean out of my chest and ricochet across the room.” However, Marlene’s obsession with Red seems unhealthy, causing her to lose sleep and become physically ill with worry over the dog. Marlene’s feelings toward Red are often melodramatic—she bristles at a birthday present of tickets to a Shirley Temple movie because the thought of leaving Red for a few hours “crushed [her] very soul.” Some young readers may not understand some of the archaic terms and references, like when Marlene describes her father’s job as “catch-as-catch-can” or the day’s temperature as “hot as the pits of Hades.” A racially charged subplot in which Marlene testifies against Mr. Arthur in a murder trial also feels inappropriate given the book’s target audience and main subject matter.
