If you've ever wondered what it would be like to pack up and drive an RV across the U.S.A. with your dog, you can do it. Just read Benoit Denizet-Lewis' novel "Travels with Casey." Casey is Benoit's yellow Labrador Retriever. Benoit is a writer for the New York Times Magazine and a professor or Writing, Literature and Publishing at Emerson College. He rented an RV and spent 4 months driving from Provincetown, Massachusetts to Florida to Texas, California, the Pacific Northwest and back toward the east through Montana, the Dakotas, Chicago, the Ohio Valley and back to New England.
He created a Facebook page for the trip and met a lot of fascinating people along the way. Throughout the book he shared stories and experiences of his own and of others he met. He introduces the reader to some really fascinating people, from dog rescuers to dog communicators and trainers.He also explores some of the hardest places for dogs from Native American reservations to kill shelters in Texas and feral dog problems in St. Louis. It really gives you a good look at dogs around the U.S.
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| Benoit with Rezzy and Casey |
This is a fun book, and all dog parents should read it. You'll learn a lot and feel like you're driving with Benoit and Casey. - Rob
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| Casey and Benoit |
“I don’t think my dog likes me very much,” New York Times Magazine writer Benoit Denizet-Lewis confesses at the beginning of his cross-country journey with his nine-year-old Labrador-mix, Casey. Over the next four months, thirty-two states, and 13,000 miles in a rented motor home, Denizet-Lewis and his lovable, moody canine companion try—with humorous and touching results—to pay tribute to the most powerful interspecies bond there is, in the country with the highest rate of dog ownership in the world.
On the way, Denizet-Lewis—“a master at effortlessly weaving bits of research into his narrative” (Los Angeles Times)—meets an irresistible cast of dogs and their dog-obsessed humans. Denizet-Lewis and Casey hang out with wolf-dogs in Appalachia, enter a dock-jumping competition in Florida, meet homeless teens and their dogs in Washington, sleep in a Beagle-shaped bed and breakfast in Idaho, and visit “Dog Whisperer” Cesar Millan in California. And then there are the really out there characters: pet psychics, dog-wielding hitchhikers, and two women who took their neighbor to court for allegedly failing to pick up her dog’s poop.
Denizet-Lewis’s memoir “is a lot like Casey…fun, sweet, and a little neurotic” (Chicago Tribune)—a delightfully idiosyncratic blend of memoir and travelogue coupled with a sociological exploration of a dog-obsessed America. Travels With Casey is “a thoroughly engaging and often hilarious investigation of the therapeutic nature of our relationships with dogs” (Booklist).
