Five-Dog Epiphany

July 15, 2024
An actor, screenwriter, and essayist reflects on how caring for five small dogs helped her come to terms with the death of her quadriplegic, nonverbal son. Canines became a fixture in Leone's life in 1994, when her then-6-year-old son, Jesse, made it clear he wanted a dog. The author and her husband bought him a bichon frise puppy named Goody, and they nicknamed him the "Prince of Dogs." Twelve years later--and a few months after Jesse passed away in his sleep and Leone was diagnosed with cancer--Goody died. Mourning her son and struggling to regain her health, the author realized that she also grieved for Goody. Seeking a way to heal, she adopted two quirky, cage-traumatized bichons, Lucky Dog and French Fry. Leone loved them deeply and pampered them with everything from the freedom to roam and play and $1,500 dog beds to filet mignon steaks brought home from fancy dinner parties. The bichons warily returned Leone's affection while she wrestled with maternal grief by writing a memoir about Jesse. Like her son, the dogs were loved unconditionally, but their emotional scars would "be there forever, like mine." Their deaths during the pandemic spurred the author to find two new rescue dogs, Titi and Sugar, to whom she wanted to reintroduce "their innate dog joy." While Leone came to understand that all the dogs she cared for embodied some part of Jesse and his love, she also came to accept that her grief, the very thing that had brought the dogs to her, was something she would carry for the rest of her life. Candid and bighearted, this book about the healing power of animal companionship will warm the hearts of animal lovers and general audiences alike. Joyful, affecting reading about love and family.

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July 22, 2024
Sopranos actor Leone (Knowing Jesse) shares in this moving memoir how she and her husband, actor Chris Cooper, began recovering from the death of their teenage son. In 2005, Leone and Cooper’s 17-year-old son, Jesse—who suffered a cerebral hemorrhage after his birth that left him permanently disabled—died in his sleep. Devastated, the couple found solace in caring for Jesse’s pet bichon frise, Goody, until Goody died of heart failure a few months later, on the eve of an operation to remove a cancerous tumor from Leone’s abdomen. To celebrate Leone’s clean bill of health following that procedure, she and Cooper adopted two bichons from a shelter. The dogs had been so badly abused that they hardly allowed the couple to touch them. Gradually, however, Leone and Cooper broke through the canines’ defenses, finding that the process helped repair their spirits after Jesse’s death. Eventually, they adopted two more bichons. In lyrical prose, Leone captures “the feeling that comes when you look into the eyes of another damaged creature and know that your happiness is a mirror and an echo and a prayer.” Readers mourning their own losses will find comfort in these pages. Photos. (Sept.)Correction: A previous version of this review misdescribed the cause of Goody’s death and the nature of Leone’s operation.