EVERY NAME BUT HIS OWN

On the first night of Prohibition, a man steps into a New York street without seeing the danger coming. A stray dog does. The dog catches the man's sleeve and pulls. The man mistakes the warning for an attack and kicks him away. By the time he understands what the animal was trying to do, it is too late. The dog remains beside him until his final breath. Then, carrying a photograph and the scent of the dying man, he searches for the boy whose name he was given.
The streets call the dog by many names-Lucky, Rags, Sergeant-but none of them is truly his. Every person sees a different animal: a threat, a nuisance, a witness, a debt, or something worthy of love. The dog does not understand their stories about him. He understands their footsteps, their hands, their fear, and whether the door before him will open or close. Every Name But His Own is a deeply emotional literary story about consciousness, grief, human blindness, and the quiet intelligence of animals.
It asks a simple but unsettling question: How much life passes before us unnoticed because it cannot speak in the language we expect?I have carried the idea for this story for many years. Dogs have been beside me throughout my life, and each possessed a consciousness, personality, and way of seeing that belonged entirely to them. They taught me that silence is not emptiness and that love sometimes begins with learning how to pay attention.
I am now allowing my imagination to take over the pen and lead me into stories I once kept only inside my mind. This book is one of those stories. I hope you enjoy it, reader. More than that, I hope it leaves you looking at the animals beside us a little differently. Much love to you.-David "Pichy" Guzman