RESCUE HEART: A LOVE STORY

A young woman rescues an abused dog and tries to build a new life in McClure’s debut novella.

Nina Locklear, a 22-year-old Native American from the Navajo Reservation near Tucumcari, New Mexico, feels utterly hopeless. She lives in an illicit compound as “something more like living furniture than a live-in girlfriend” to its boss, the violent drug dealer James Savin, who runs a horrifyingly brutal dog-fighting operation. Nina is forced to watch these savage death matches, and she feels an instant connection with a golden-brown shepherd mix that seems destined for death in the cage matches. She realizes that, like the beautiful and seemingly doomed dog, she is trapped. When she can endure Savin’s savagery no more, she collects the golden dog and makes a daring escape by stealing Savin’s money and one of his cars. She’s unaware that her escape has been carefully watched via drone by agents Lianna Cortez and Andrew Davis, who’ve been building a case against Savin for a long time. Suddenly Nina and her canine companion find themselves being pursued by both law enforcement agents and a vengeful Savin. They make their way from New Mexico to California, where by chance they encounter a friendly surfer named Charlie, described by McClure in glowing terms: “He stepped out onto the sand with his bronze skin glistening, surfboard under his arm, shaking his wet hair out, striding directly over to her.” From these sparse elements, McClure crafts a fast-paced story, aided a great deal by the wise decision to curtail its length; as a novel, all of this might feel overcooked, but as a novella, it works perfectly. And the standout narrative strengths of the story—Nina's raw courage and her steadily deepening attachment to her rescued dog—make for the book's most memorable elements.

A lean and very moving page-turner about a woman’s bond with a dog she saved.