Coffee with a canine: Judith Claire Mitchell & Josie

Featured at Coffee with a Canine: Judith Claire Mitchell & Josie.

The author, on Josie's best quality:

She’s a genius. I’ll give you an example. Once, she came downstairs where I was watching TV and began barking. I thought she was asking to go outside, and I reminded her that she’d just gone out a few minutes before and she was not going out again. She thought about what had transpired, then trotted into the adjacent bathroom and gazed into the toilet. Then she looked at me. She did this twice more—looked into the toilet, looked back at me—until the light dawned. “Do you want water?” I asked. She recognized the word “water” and cocked her head, the universal Westie sign for “Hallelujah, you finally got it, you dolt.” We went upstairs and sure enough, there wasn’t a drop of water in her bowl. Now, is that brilliant or...[read on]

About A Reunion of Ghosts, from the publisher:

Three wickedly funny sisters.

One family's extraordinary legacy.

A single suicide note that spans a century...

Meet the Alter sisters: Lady, Vee, and Delph. These three mordantly witty, complex women share their family's apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. They love each other fiercely, but being an Alter isn't easy. Bad luck is in their genes, passed down through the generations. Yet no matter what curves life throws at these siblings—and it's hurled plenty—they always have a wisecrack, and one another.

In the waning days of 1999, the trio decides it's time to close the circle of the Alter curse. But first, as the world counts down to the dawn of a new millennium, Lady, Vee, and Delph must write the final chapter of a saga lifetimes in the making—one that is inexorably intertwined with that of the twentieth century itself. Unspooling threads of history, personal memory, and family lore, they weave a mesmerizing account of their lives that stretches back decades to their great-grandfather, a brilliant scientist whose professional triumph became the sinister legacy that defines them.

Funny, heartbreaking, and utterly original, A Reunion of Ghosts is a magnificent novel about three unforgettable women bound to each other, and to their remarkable family, through the blessings and the burdens bestowed by blood.

Visit Judith Claire Mitchell's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Judith Claire Mitchell & Josie.

--Marshal Zeringue