Water Dogs

Lewis Robinson's critically acclaimed story collection Officer Friendly was described by the San Francisco Chronicle as "eleven letter-perfect stories with the keen understanding of human nature readers expect to find in works by veterans like Alice Munro." Now Robinson has written Water Dogs, a suspenseful, disquieting, and compulsively readable first novel that takes an unforgettable look at the delicate patchwork of a family.Bennie knows that the details of his life don't show well. A twenty-seven-year-old college dropout with stalled ambitions, he works at an animal shelter and lives with his bullheaded older brother, Littlefield, in their old family home on Meadow Island, Maine, a house that has fallen into disrepair since their father's untimely death several years earlier.When a massive blizzard hits the state one Saturday afternoon, Bennie, Littlefield, and a crew of roughneck war-game enthusiasts decide to play paintball at the...