Five-Dog Epiphany: How a Quintet of Badass Bichons Retrieved Our Joy

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.