Animals (and some humans)

Hilarious tales from the mayhem of a life peppered with a variety of animals, complicated humans, and unusual animal-related jobs.

Beginning again doesn't always look heroic or clever; sometimes it looks like getting another dog.

This is a memoir told through the animals that have wandered, charged, limped, and occasionally crashed their way through the author's life. There are dogs, cats, lambs, donkeys, pigs, and one particularly unfortunate lizard.

For Virginia Fallon, animals become markers in a life shaped by loss, reinvention, and the ongoing surprise of finding herself in places she never expected to be. They were there through childhood and motherhood, marriage and its ending, farm life, veterinary nursing, journalism, an emptying nest, and the difficult business of beginning again.

Animals (and some people) I have known is about the lives we build around other living things, and what caring for them teaches us about ourselves. It is about grief and survival, the strange shapes of families, and the animals who witnessed versions of us that no longer exist.

Ultimately, this is not only a book about animals. It's also about love, in all its messy and inconvenient forms.