Follows the wanderings of a little performing dog in France, England, and at sea during World War II.
Focusing on a dog, named at one time Bel, and earlier Ria, Sheila Burnford has achieved the extraordinary: a subtle psychological novel whose field is the rapport and interaction between human and animal. This is her first novel since the classic The Incredible Journey (1961), that brief, beloved tale of three family pets who find their way home together across the Canadian wilderness. Bel Ria begins on the dusty roads of western France, crowded with refugees and strafed by German Stukas, in the almost fatal summer of 1940. Among those the Germans kill is a silent, crafty Gypsy woman. Among the abandoned is her little performing dog.
He is abandoned in the worst sense; without the secret cues that had guided his joyous performances, no human can ever really communicate with him again. But such is his spunky charm, his responsive intelligence everyone tries: the monkey who is for a time his companion, the British servicemen who successively adopt him, the old lady who ultimately gives him a home. In their efforts to understand him, the people are, variously, changed. They are brought out of their loneliness, and at last they are brought together. The dog, who is their magnet, remains mysterious until the deeply affecting end of his story.
—from the dust jacket
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