"But there was no price that could be put on Sounder's voice. It came out of the great chest cavity and broad jaws as though it had bounced off the walls of a cave. It mellowed into half-echo before it touched the air.... Each bark bounced from slope to slope in the foothills like a rubber ball. But it was not an ordinary bark. It filled up the night and made music as though the branches of all the trees were being pulled across silver strings.... [A]ll over the countryside, neighbors, leaning against slanting porch posts or standing in open cabin doorways and listening, knew that it was Sounder."

Sounder, the mixed-breed hound for whom William Armstrong's prize-winning novel is named, is known for his unique voice, a voice shaped and made distinct by the particular kind of body that produces it and through the resonance given...