When Harry Met Minnie: An unexpected friendship and the gift of love beyond loss

Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "A beautiful book." - Jo Good, BBC Radio London "When Harry Met Minnie made me cry and made me dance with joy. It's an exquisite tale about heartbreak and healing, critters and humans, and the little miracles life hands us when we need them the most." - Jeannette Walls, New York Times bestselling author of The Glass Castle and Half Broke Horses There are true fairy tales. Stories that exist because impossible-to-explain coincidences change everything. Except in real life, not all of them have conventional, happily-ever-after endings... This Manhattan tale of laughter and tears charts the Nora Ephron-esque love story between two "complicated" dogs, Harry and Minnie, and the gift of unexpected friendship they gave to their owners, Carol and Martha. Carol, who is dying of cancer caused by the toxic pollution in New York in the aftermath of 9/11, needs someone to take care of Harry, who is a 'great listener but does have a problem with large dogs. He is great with smaller dogs. If he sees a hose he will destroy it to protect you. He will figure out ways to let you know exactly how he feels'. When Martha has a chance encounter with Carol's friend, he can't help but notice Minnie, 'oh those chunky little legs', and so the matchmaking begins. After a disastrous first meeting, when Minnie doesn't appear to think much of Harry (who is super keen), things improve and soon they are inseparable. As Carol's illness progresses, so a new friendship and community blossoms, Carol's Club. The bonds that grew changed Martha's life, Carol's life, Minnie's life and Harry's life. And they changed Carol's death as well. In this rich and touching narrative, Martha considers the ways our stories are shaped by the people we meet, and the profound love we can find by opening our hearts to unexpected encounters.

Martha Teichner has been a correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning since December 1993. Since joining CBS News in 1977, Teichner has earned multiple national awards for her original reporting, including 11 Emmy Awards, an Alfred I. duPont Award and five James Beard Foundation Awards. Martha has reported on some of the largest national and international stories of this era, including the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the run-up to the war in Iraq, the death of Princess Diana and the life and death of Nelson Mandela. Now based in New York, Teichner spent more than a dozen years as a foreign correspondent covering major international news. Teichner was twice assigned to the CBS News London bureau (1980-1984, 1989-1994), covering the Northern Ireland hunger strikes, the Royal Wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana, and was one of only a handful of female war correspondents. She reported on the fall of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe and the Romanian revolution. Teichner also spent several weeks in the Bolivian jungle covering undercover operations with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.