A Curious Host follows a scavenging yellow dog, our improbable protagonist, as he wanders his way in and out of the lives of residents living in a place identified only as "the plain town."
Skillfully presented, each chapter is a vignette where past and present are intertwined and the true nature of time is artfully captured. The characters include a young waitress living out of her car, a cigar-smoking poker-playing widow, a white-haired biologist, and the dog's owner who persistently pursues his lost animal.
As readers journey through each separate, but related scene, a startling truth unfolds: something is killing the not-so-ordinary citizens of the small and outwardly simple community. Unwilling to accept this as coincidence, the town's doctor searches for a pattern—some connection that links the deaths together—before it's too late.
Avery masterfully weaves humor, nostalgia, clear-eyed observation, and dispassionate reflection to create an exploration of themes as old as time itself, including companionship, salvation, immortality, the tension between choice and chance, and the struggle to find meaning in an existence seemingly defined by fate and the natural cycles of life, death, and renewal.
