Joseph Oliver Moneen, or "Joe", was my first feline friend. After he passed away from cancer two years ago, I wrote a song for him called "Beautiful Joe".
Imagine my emotion when I found a young adult novel recently titled "Beautiful Joe". Written by Canadian author Margaret Marshall Saunders in 1982, and based on a true story, the book follows a cruelly abused and mutilated dog named Joe as he learns to love and trust again. Despite his horrible disfiguration, the other characters in the book understand that Joe is truly beautiful -- inside and outside -- regardless. And the best part: It is narrated by the Joe the dog himself.
I am going to be reading -- and bawling about -- this book, and shall therefore do you the honour of blogging (and bawling) about it over the weeks to come. It's going to be dreadfully emotional. I can already tell...
