Campaign for the American Reader: Pg. 69: "The Good Good Pig"

Sy Montgomery is a naturalist, author, documentary scriptwriter, and radio commentator.

"To research books, films and articles," according to her website, "Sy Montgomery has been chased by an angry silverback gorilla in Zaire and bitten by a vampire bat in Costa Rica. She has worked in a pit crawling with 18,000 snakes in Manitoba and handled a wild tarantula in French Guiana. She has been deftly undressed by an orangutan in Borneo, hunted by a tiger in India, and swum with piranhas, electric eels and dolphins in the Amazon.

"But her newest book for adult readers is a love story—a true one—about home, about family, and particularly, about a pig."

I asked Sy to put The Good Good Pig: The Extraordinary Life of Christopher Hogwood to the "page 69 test." She replied that page 69 is indeed a good introduction to her book. Here's an excerpt from the page, followed by her elaboration of how it fits the book:

Elsewhere...pigs are widely admired. A Hindu creation legend tells us that the great god Vishnu took the form of a boar in order to lift up the Earth on his strong back from the waters of the primeval flood; he is often depicted with a boar's head on a human body. In Papua New Guinea, many tribes measure their wealth by the number of pigs they have. Women sometimes suckle orphaned pigs along with their own infants. In some of these areas, the pigs are not eaten. Instead they are admired for their beauty and fecundity, and especially for their handsome, curving tusks.

[Our pig] Christopher was yet to grow tusks. But already he was, I thought, very beautiful: his black and white coat glossy, his eyes bright and expressive, his black hooves shiny and trim. But his beauty was more than skin (or even lard) deep. Though we didn't realize it at the time, Christopher was already bringing to us the blessings for which pigs have been credited for centuries: strength, luck, friends, even family.

In fact, The Good Good Pig is about all the blessings a runt piglet named Christopher Hogwood brought into my life. It is a memoir about the things that really matter: community and family. And it is a testament to the fact that family is not about blood, but about love. The book is an affirmation that the definition of family can be far richer than simply the opposite-sex, same-ethnicity person you legally marry and your biological children. In my case, my family included many members of other species: from dogs to birds (who are more closely related to dinosaurs than to humans) as well as children I didn't bear (or adopt), and a husband who was different enough from me that my parents disowned me for marrying him.

One I day I hope that all people realize that a great soul can come to us in any form. In my case, he came home in a shoebox, a runt deemed too sickly to live--and grew into a 750 pound hog who lived to age 14, pampered and adored by our entire New Hampshire village. Neighborhood kids came to wash and groom him at "Pig Spa." Local restaurants brought him gourmet slops. Local voters wrote his name in at town elections. Our one town cop kept apples in the cruiser in case he met up with Chris (who was an escape artist) on the road. But the real beneficiary of all this affection was those of us who loved him--as those of us who love animals well know. He was, as a neighbor told me, "a great big Buddha master" who "taught us how to love what life gives you" and this book is the story of what he showed us.

Many thanks to Sy for the input.

Click here to read an excerpt from The Good Good Pig.

The book has collected many positive reviews and endorsements, including:

"I LOVE this book! It takes us into the world of one pig with such delicacy, such gentleness and yet such depth, that you will never be able to look a pig in the eye again without recognizing the unique person living within. You become somebody who sees why Sy Montgomery loved a pig beyond all measure. When you finish her book, so will you."
—Jeffrey Masson, Ph.D., author of When Elephants Weep and The Pig who Sang to the Moon

"I wasn't sure what to expect when I picked up Sy Montgomery's story of Christopher the pig. The love affair between dogs and cats and people is richly documented. Pigs are another matter. What I found was a charming, touching, funny and ultimately very powerful tale of an extraordinary, even complicated pig and his impact on some very loving, perceptive and extraordinary people. This story is heartwarming but packs a wallop. "THE GOOD GOOD PIG" is a very welcome and original addition to the best stories about the remarkable bond between some people and some animals, and Sy Montgomery has done her pig well."
—Jon Katz, author of Katz on Dogs and The Dogs of Bedlam Farm

The Christian Science Monitor named The Good Good Pig to its "Best Nonfiction 2006" list.

For a Q & A with Sy--including the questions: "What led you to become, in the words of the Boston Globe, 'part Indiana Jones and part Emily Dickinson'? Who were some of your influences, both literary and scientific?"--click here.

Sy Montgomery's many other books include Journey of the Pink Dolphins: An Amazon Quest, The Wild Out Your Window, Walking With the Great Apes: Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, B