David Wroblewski biography

Interview

David Wroblewski talks about his first book, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, which explores the relationship between people and dogs and poses the oft-asked question: what comes next for us?

How did dogs come to play such an important role in your life?

Dogs and dog stories have been a passion of mine as long as I can remember. In fact, my very earliest memory is of sitting in the living room of our house in Pewaukee, Wisconsin watching a visitor coming up the sidewalk, while our collie, Princess, sat beside me. I was a two or three years old at the time. A few years later my parents, in a surprisingly bohemian move, relocated from the Milwaukee suburbs to a farm in central Wisconsin, and there my mother had a chance to fulfill a lifelong dream of hers, to breed dogs. For five years she did just that, establishing and running Cary Valley Kennels while my father worked in a local machine shop. My duties, like Edgar's, included naming and socializing the pups. But raising dogs according to the standards my parents demanded was too costly for our very poor family, and when I was ten years old, they shut down the kennel. In the meantime I had adopted an abandoned stray, a dog who refused ever to come into the house or even wear a collar, though he enthusiastically—almost maniacally—defended our yard against skunks, deer and passing cars. Eventually, that dog would become the ...