First published 2022
★★★
Lost hikers. Natural disaster victims. Murder victims. Elshult and her search dogs (often with Mansfield on the team) have gone out looking for all of them. From the Oso landslide to missing persons cases in Sweden, Elshult takes the reader through some of the searches she and her dog Keb have worked on.
I can't really tell you why, but I love me a book about search and rescue, and although I'm 1000% a cat person, I also love me a book specifically about search and rescue dogs. Truly, about the only thing that makes me wish I were a dog person is that being entirely not a dog person means that my chances of doing this kind of search and rescue are nil. So this kind of memoir? Yes please.
The book doesn't disappoint, telling stories of both searches in which she and Keb were hoping to find a living person and searches in which they were just hoping to provide closure. A couple of the stories I was familiar with already (...not my first lost-in-the-woods book!), but there's a good variety. In most, but not all, of the missing-persons cases here there's some sort of resolution, but the book is good about avoiding too much foreshadowing, letting the stories play out as the team experienced them. One or two stories felt a bit long, but I think that was just that...well, some searches take longer than others.
There's a fair amount in here about organizational politics and infighting, which was honestly pretty sad to read about. Obviously any organization can fall prey to such infighting, but how sad when it's in the context of people doing such good/important/skilled work. Not something I really would have expected, going into this book.
Not one for the faint of heart, but a good reminder of how much good a few determined people—and their uniquely qualified dogs—can do in a bad situation.
Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.
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