Chapters 1-4 Summary

"Flawed Dogs," a story about a lost dog searching for his owner while vindicating himself for a crime he didn't commit, begins with an Author's Note explaining that the events at the Westminster Dog Show were more complex than President Obama reported. With that aside, the novel turns to Chapter 1, in which a man simply known as "the rough-handed man" takes his little dog to a dog fight, though he seems sad about it. There, the dog smells a new scent and finds that he is facing a bull terrier, many times his size, and ferocious: ready to kill. Not knowing what to do, the little dog lies down in a corner of the arena, where he hears a young girl call "Sam the Lion," and he begins to smile.

In Chapter 2, the action then shifts to three years earlier, and...