Book Review Sunday: Dog Bone Soup by Bette A. Stevens @BetteAStevens

DOG BONE SOUP by Bette A. Stevens

Book Blurb

DOG BONE SOUP is not only the title of Bette A. Stevens’s debut novel; it ranks high among the paltry meals that the book’s protagonist, Shawn Daniels, wants to forget. Plodding through mounting snow and battling howling winds, Shawn is ready to leave it all behind—living in poverty, Dad’s drinking, life in foster care, the divorce, the bullies…. Travel with Shawn Daniels through the guts and the glories of life in DOG BONE SOUP, a Boomer’s coming-of-age saga. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, but mostly you’ll be glad you read it.

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Book Review (from AmazonUK)

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully Written
By Amazon Customer on 3 April 2017
Format: Kindle Edition|Verified Purchase

Beautifully Written
The poignant story of Shawn and his family opens as he leaves home to serve in the armed forces. Looking back over his childhood he recounts his father’s struggle with alcohol addiction, and the poverty his family endured.

Shawn and his brother have daring adventures on their bicycles, collecting bottles along the roadside, exchanging them for cash, and buying pop, ice cream and other sweet delicacies…

As money becomes tighter, Shawn uses his ingenuity to put FREE food on the table, by milking their neighbours cows in early morning, taking windfall apples from a lady who refuses to give them these fruits, preferring them to rot…

The families money struggles also force their mother to make soup out of bones that would have been given to dogs.

However, Bette’s book is never depressing. It is filled with the innocence of a childhood spent amongst the New England countryside, and a love of Nature. I absolutely loved her writing style, and I have no hesitation in recommending it to others.

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Author Bio

Inspired by nature and human nature, author Bette A. Stevens is a retired elementary and middle school teacher, a wife, mother of two and grandmother of five. Stevens lives in Central Maine with her husband on their 37-acre farmstead where she enjoys reading, writing, gardening, walking and reveling in the beauty of nature. She advocates for children and families, for childhood literacy and for the conservation of monarch butterflies—an endangered species (and for milkweed, the only plant that monarch caterpillars will eat).

Stevens is the author of AMAZING MATILDA, an award-winning picture book; The Tangram Zoo and Word Puzzles Too!, a home/school resource  incorporating hands-on math and writing; and PURE TRASH, the short story prequel to her début novel, DOG BONE SOUP—coming-of-age story and family drama set in 1950s and 60s New England.