Huck: The Remarkable True Story of How One Lost Puppy Taught a Family--and a Whole Town--about Hope and Happy Endings by Janet Elder

for Florida, we took Huck, his oversized round pillow of a bed, a turquoise-and-white plastic sneaker that squeaked when he held it in his teeth, his red leash, his red jacket, his food, and a container of cream cheese to the Clarks’ house in Ramsey, New Jersey. Huck had been there only once before for a few hours on Christmas Day.
    Huck could not get comfortable in the car. Like a lot of New Yorkers, he’d never had a real reason to be in a car, and the trip to New Jersey was one of only a handful of rides he had ever had. I held him on my lap, and he settled a bit, but trembled for most of the forty-five-minute car ride across the Hudson River and up through the foothills of the Ramapo Mountains in northern New Jersey.
    I felt a little like trembling, too. I was glad Rich was driving. I still didn’t feel entirely competent behind the wheel of a car, one of the stranger and unexpected side effects of the cancer treatments. Although my hair had now grown enough to look short chic rather than bizarre, other parts of me were returning more slowly.
    At some point over the last eleven months, I had lost my ability to intuit. I found that I could not rely on my gut instincts, whether it was about what Michael wanted for dinner or which angle of a news story to bear down on. It was unnerving. I had an unfamiliar skittishness about my own judgment.
    I mentioned it to my doctor, who thought it might be part of the intellectual fog that can be a side effect of chemotherapy. But I always felt it was something deeper. It was as though I had lost depth perception about life. I felt uncertain a lot of the time. I was unable to judge just how far I would fall if I made a wrong decision.
    It eventually wore off, but on that cold March night, terra firma seemed hard to find. As we drove through the darkness, I started wondering if it was a mistake to leave Huck in a place so unfamiliar to him. The Clarks had a busy life of their own. Barbara commuted into Manhattan every day. Dave worked. Darian, the only one of their three children young enough to still live at home, played on assorted sports teams. Maybe I was taking advantage of their generosity. I suddenly felt more of a sense of melancholy than excitement. I shook it off.
    We drove down Ramsey’s Main Street, past the stone-faced Episcopal Church with the red doors, past Veterans Park with its monument honoring World War II veterans, past the stately looking high school, over the train tracks, past the bank, the hardware store, the ice cream shop, the movie theater, and the library; past all of the symbols of the small town’s pride and fierce sense of community.
    There are six churches in Ramsey. Volunteers run the fire department, and the sports teams, as well as dozens of civic organizations. The town’s leaders haven’t allowed a Gap or a McDonald’s to replace the mom-and-pop shops.
    In its earliest day, residents of Ramsey grew strawberries by the railroad-cars-full and sent them to New York. The town has pre–Revolutionary War roots and takes great pride in the oldest house, which dates from that period. For much of the 1900s, there was a sign in town: RAMSEY—ALTITUDE 410 FEET—THE 3RD HEALTHIEST PLACE IN THE UNITED STATES . Makes me wonder what the first two were.
    Every fall, just when the leaves begin to turn bright yellow and orange and the air is crisp, the town holds “Ramsey Day,” complete with a parade, fire engines, flanks of Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, at least one marching band, and generations of Ramsey residents who turn out to celebrate their life there.
    People like Fred Swallow, whom I once met at Ramsey Day, show up. A tall, kind-looking man, a retired barber and World War II veteran, Fred mans the VFW booth, selling white T-shirts for the post with a picture of a giant bald eagle flanked on either side by American flags and the words TAKING PRIDE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA .
    Fred had gone to barber school in New York after serving in the