Bespotted: My Family's Love Affair with Thirty-Eight Dalmatians

.nstead of 101 Dalmatians, there are 38 in this memoir by Sexton (Half in Love). The author shares the story how the birth of a litter of pups when she was a child affected her mother, poet Anne Sexton, whose poem "Live," included in her Pulitzer Prize-winning collection Live or Die, relates the experience. After her own marriage, having children, and moving to California, Sexton began showing her dogs professionally. Eventually opening a kennel and breeding Dalmatians, she kept one puppy from a litter. Gulliver became her "therapy" during a period of clinical depression, attempted suicides, and eventual divorce. In midlife, with the help of Gulliver and Sexton's second husband, her depression abated and she returned to writing. Most recently, a litter of Dal puppies and several adults round out the 38 thus far in Sexton's life.