The Dust of 100 Dogs by A.S. King

From the Publisher

A Spring 2009 Children's Indie Next List Pick for Teens! 

In the late seventeenth century, famed teenage pirate Emer Morrisey was on the cusp of escaping the pirate life with her one true love and unfathomable riches when she was slain and cursed with "the dust of one hundred dogs," dooming her to one hundred lives as a dog before returning to a human body-with her memories intact.

Now she's a contemporary American teenager and all she needs is a shovel and a ride to Jamaica.

Exciting, fascinating, spellbinding. I'd follow Saffron into the briny deep.
—Heather Brewer, author of The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod

A non-traditional pirate tale with a dangerously raw, mystical edge and a unique modern twist. Deliciously fresh and starkly unforgettable. —Lisa McMann,
New York Times best-selling author of Wake

Sparkling, original, both swashbuckling and contemporary...This gripping adventure is sure to be devoured by both teens and adults. —Lauren Baratz-Logsted,
author of Angel's Choice

AUTHOR INTERVIEW INSIDE THE BOOK!

Publishers Weekly

Seventeenth-century pirate Emer Morrisey, murdered and cursed to live the lives of 100 dogs, finally rematerializes as Saffron Adams, 1980s teenager, in King's far-reaching but uneven debut. Cognizant of her past lives, Saffron's sole ambition is to unearth a treasure buried in Jamaica, even as her oblivious parents urge her toward conventional success. Chapters alternate between Saffron's struggles to conceal her swashbuckling instincts and Emer's falling for a lackluster country boy-then escaping an arranged marriage-while en route to the high seas. Emer's dog incarnations appear in short chapters entitled "Dog Facts," which, though charming, feel superimposed; additional sections are devoted to an aggressive alcoholic living in modern Jamaica. The litany of narratives leaves authentic characters like Saffron's emotionally crippled mother vying for page time, and Saffron's (Emer-inspired) hostility-"Why was she forcing me to take a cutlass to the ligaments at the back of her knees?" thinks Saffron, imagining taking down her mother-feel like intrusion on otherwise poignant glimpses of an unraveling family. Readers will want to love this book, but may not find enough to sink their teeth into. Ages 14-up. (Feb.)

Kirkus Reviews

Cursed by a strange man just after losing her one true love, Irish pirate Emer Morrissey must live 300 years in the bodies of various dogs before being reincarnated in 1972 as human Saffron Adams. Saffron retains all of Emer's memories and is thought to be a genius for her great knowledge of history. As Saffron drags the reader through her uninspired life in a dysfunctional Pennsylvania family, she makes plans to travel to Jamaica and dig up the treasure that she buried there as Emer, 300 years ago. Later in the book, King introduces the creepy Fred, who has deviant sexual tendencies and carries on conversations with his mother in his head-and whose connection to Emer/Saffron isn't revealed until the end. With its sloppy, uneven pacing, kitchen-sink plot and boring characters, even the most loyal of pirate mateys will wish that Saffron and Fred would simply walk the plank. The language is anachronistic during Emer's story and lacks spark when Saffron narrates. Despite Emer's pirate adventures, there is little excitement and the ending is anticlimactic. This is not buried treasure, just fool's gold. (Fantasy. YA)

Product Details

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Read an Excerpt

Isn’t She Sweet?

Imagine my surprise when, after three centuries of fight-ing with siblings over a spare furry teat and licking my water from a bowl, I was given a huge human nipple, all to myself, filled with warm mother’s milk. I say it was huge because Sadie Adams, my mother, has enormous breasts, something I never inherited.

When I was born into a typical family in Hollow Ford, Pennsylvania, in 1972, my life was finally mine again. No more obeying orders from masters, no more performing silly tricks, and no more rancid scraps to eat. Within seconds of my birth, I was suckling like no other child in the local maternity ward, in order to grow strong quickly and return to a life cut short by the blade.

A puppy can walk and wander and whine from the minute they leave the amniotic sac. There is a freedom in that, which I learned to appreciate during those first years as a human again. Lying on my back for hours in a crib, wearing a diaper, and drooling made me feel like an idiot. I first tried to walk again at five months old and promptly fell over onto the linoleum floor, wailing from pain and frustration.

I was the youngest of five children born to Sadie and Alfred. Being the last, there was no wonder for them in my first steps or mutterings, and only a sigh of relief when I started to use the toilet by myself.

I don’t know if my parents saw it then, but they cer-tainly noticed later that I was completely different from other children. When I first began talking, I sometimes spoke of places I’d never been, and they would look at me, confused. When I started school, my kindergarten teacher arranged a meeting with themand asked where I’d gotten so much knowledge of history and language. They shrugged and figured I was going to be the genius in the family—so I didn’t let them down.

In all fairness, they needed a genius. As I grew up, I started to notice that life in the Adams household was less typical than it appeared on the outside. My father suffered horribly from the side effects of his tour in the Vietnam War and my mother had never recovered from her child-hood. Their lives had been lived on the edge of poverty and emotional instability. In me and my superhuman intelligence, they saw a way out of their troubles and shame, and so they rarely questioned any of it.

But after a meeting with my first grade teacher, they had to sit me down and ask a few things.

“Saffron, how did you know so much about the second world war?”

“I guess I saw it on the TV,” I answered, trying not to sound coy.

My father frowned. “You couldn’t have seen it on the TV. They don’t say that much on the TV.”

“Must have read it in a book, then.”

“Sweetie, we don’t have any books like that. Did you read it somewhere else?” my mother cooed.

“I must have.”

“Hmmm.”

“Saffron, we know you’re a very clever girl, but do you think there’s a way you could stop showing off in class? Mrs. Zeiber is concerned that you’re making the other children feel bad,” she said.

“Then why don’t they put me in a higher grade?” I didn’t like Mrs. Zeiber, but now I had reason to like her even less. I pictured myself liberating her eyeball from its socket and tossing it onto the merry-go-round in the first grade recess area.

“But we thought you liked being in Mrs. Zeiber’s class.”

“I do, but I’m pretty bored. I’m sick of counting to a hundred,” I whined.

They looked at me, and shrugged at each other. Two weeks later, after winter break, I was enrolled in the district’s  gifted program—the ultimate place for showing off knowl-edge that no other first grader could have. I blabbered about everything—the goings-on in the Truman White House, the main tenets of Hinduism, the political complications of Central Africa. My peers envied me, even the teachers envied me. I was like a miracle kid or something, and peo-ple started to talk.

The next year, I realized that life as Saffron Adams would have to be far more inconspicuous. I couldn’t go around claiming to be a genius, and I couldn’t go telling stories from history that I shouldn’t know yet. I guess I realized that the more I said, the more chance I had of ruining everything I was working toward.

It was then, in 1980, the year I turned eight years old, that I forged my plan to return to the Caribbean Sea. Most of the other kids in my class were toying with being rock stars or President of the United States, but I had something much more appealing in mind. Finally done with my one hundred lives as a dog, I would one day reclaim my jewels and gold, hold them close to my heart, and live happily ever after.

So from that day forward, in order to seem my age when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I answered accordingly.

“I want to be a pirate,” I would say. And they would smile and think, “Isn’t she sweet?”