Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls

Synopsis:

This is a children’s fiction book about a ten- year old boy named Billy Colman. He lives in the Ozark Mountains of Oklahoma with his mother, father, and three younger sisters. Billy has always wanted a pair of red-bone coonhounds for coon hunting. After saving two years for them, Billy walks twenty miles to the nearest town to get them and names them Old Dan and Little Ann.

He quickly bonds with them and becomes very attached to them and teaches them how to hunt. They become renowned as the best hunters in the Ozarks. After Billy’s grandfather enters Billy in a championship raccoon hunt, Billy wins the competition and also three hundred dollars.

One night, while Billy is hunting with Old Dan and Little Ann, a mountain lion attacks them, and Billy attempts to save them, but the mountain lion turns on him. Old Dan and Little Ann kill the mountain lion, but Old Dan eventually dies of his injuries, and Little Ann dies of starvation and sadness a few days later.

Billy is heartbroken, but because of the money that Billy won in the contest, his family is finally able to move to a town where he and his sisters can get an education. Before they move, Billy visits the graves of his dogs and finds a giant red fern growing between the graves and believes this was the work of a higher power.

Review:

I love this book and found it to be very heartwarming and touching and loved the bond between Billy and his dogs.

“Only an angel could plant the seeds of a red fern, and that they never died; where one grew, the spot was sacred.”

“People have been trying to understand dogs since the beginning of time. One never knows what they’ll do. You can read every day where a dog saves the life of a drowning child, or lay down his life for his master. Some people call this loyalty. I don’t. I may be wrong, but I call this love-the deepest kind of love.”

“Although the old hound had no way of knowing it, he had stirred memories, and what priceless treasures they were. Memories of my old boyhood days, an old K.C. Baking Powder can, and two little red hounds, memories of a wonderful love, unselfish devotion, and death in its saddest forms.”

“Yes, I know it is still there, for in my heart I believe the legend of the sacred red fern.”