The dogs of March
(Book)

Howard Elman is a man whose internal landscape is as disordered as his front yard, where native New Hampshire birches and maples mingle with a bullet-riddled washer, abandoned bathroom fixtures, and several junk cars. Howard, anti-hero of this first novel in Ernest Hebert’s highly acclaimed Darby Chronicles, is a man who is tough and tender. Howard’s battle against encroaching change symbolizes the class conflict between indigenous Granite Staters scratching out a living and citified immigrants with “college degrees and big bank accounts.” Like the winter-weakened deer threatened by the dogs of March—the normally docile house pets whose instincts arouse them to chase and kill for sport—Howard, too, is sorely beset.