Small-time Arizona filmmaker Jerome Doggman has a plan: lure a desert-dwelling fundamentalist sect into one of his scathing exposes on religion. Things go awry when Dogg stumbles across nefarious doings and winds up murdered...
But, surprise! - Dogg comes back to life in the body of the subject of his expose- a fundamentalist teenage boy. Vehemently anti-religious in his previous existence, Dogg must now endure life as the subject of his own contempt.
To make things worse, he's smitten with the teenage boy's older sister, Florence, who cares for her brother with strained, loving patience as he kicks and screams against the austere religious world he finds himself bound to. Meanwhile, Dogg's elusive memories return to him in confounding pieces, and the men who killed him the first time slowly sense something in the wind-that Dogg isn't really dead.
Taking place along the Ajo Highway, which runs through the Tohono O'odham Indian Nation of southern Arizona, this allegorical tale of Dogg's extraordinary journey explores themes of empathy and atonement, all through the mystifying world of reincarnation. Under an allusive desert moon, the saguaro cactus dance, and the Thunderbirds hover above, as Dogg's need to remember who he was in his previous life takes on real urgency-His killers are closing in, and they want Dogg dead again.
***
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents, either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Geoff and Naomi are dead, and they're depressed, but when Geoff's cat Bernie dies as well, they embark on a wild journey to find it in the underworld.
*****
When Geoff dies, alongside his girlfriend Naomi, they end up sharing an apartment in the Underworld as skeletons. But after a few years, Geoff starts suffering a mid-death crisis. What's the purpose of going through the motions as a skeleton if you can't really live? Then he gets word that his cat, Bernie, just died and he can collect him and bring him home! Geoff and Naomi hurry to get Bernie only to discover that, due to a clerical error, their cat has been lost. With the hunt for Bernie giving new purpose to Geoff's un-life, he and Naomi begin a quest to get back their cat. Battling skeleton pirates, climbing the sky ladder and facing off against the villain who took Bernie, Geoff is determined to find his purpose - or die a second time trying!
[[2018 Wattys Winner - The Originals]]
[[word count: 30,000-40,000 words]]