Buck is living the good life in the soft South, when he is snatched and transported to the savagery of the Northland. There, the Klondlike gold rush has brought out rough basic instincts of survival in men - and dogs. He adjusts to the gruelling regime of a sled dog, which almost kills him, but he survives to ...
"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and...