What draws me to a work of fiction are a good story, well-developed characters and a keen delineation of the world in which the story takes place. David Wroblewski’s Familiaris does all these things extremely well.

 Familiaris is the prequel to Wroblewski’s bestselling first novel, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, a retelling of Hamlet set in northern Wisconsin. The new work takes place two generations before the events of Edgar Sawtelle and introduces us to John Sawtelle, Edgar’s grandfather, who started the dog breeding business that made the Sawtelle name famous. When we meet John, he’s about to be fired from his job as a test driver at the Kissel Automotive Company in Hartford, Wisconsin. Shoutouts to Hemingway and W. Somerset Maugham anchor the story in time.

David Wroblewski

John Sawtelle has an endless supply of ideas, a fertile imagination and a persuasive nature. He was “a man who never saw things simply,” says his wife, Mary. Sometimes those ideas go awry. He convinces his two best friends, Elbow and Frank, to join him in enlisting to fight in World War I. While John is rejected, Frank ships overseas, is gravely wounded and blames John for the loss of his arm and leg. On other occasions, John’s notions gush forth in hilarious ways. One drunken evening, he regales a bar full of people who appear to be despondent about the lack of “good stuff”:

In the future, we’ll make our own phonograph records! Instead of writing letters. We’ll make phonograph records from our voices and send them through the mail. … Chimpanzee dentists! Aluminum clothes! Orgasms that cure cancer! Brain theaters! … Domesticated thunderclouds! Pavement that digests litter!

Beholden as he is to his restless mind, John is adrift in the world and has no sense of his true calling. But when he takes a drive on one of his days off, he happens upon a farm for sale and knows immediately that it is the key to his life’s purpose. John and Mary purchase the farm and move there with Elbow and Frank to start new lives. They meet Walter Paine, the owner of a country store, and his strange daughter Ida, who is possessed by a supernatural entity and who plays a pivotal role in some of the story’s later events.

When the Sawtelles arrive at the farm, which they name Relaxalot, they intend to renew its crops and fields but soon turn to dog breeding. John has an affinity for dogs. He is enthralled with the development of his dog’s puppies and the way they manifest distinct character traits. After a wild night at a speakeasy, The Blind Tigers, he becomes the custodian of a pregnant dog. When he rehomes the pups, John talks with his neighbors, learning what they like and dislike about dogs. He keeps extensive notes. He and Mary hit upon the idea of breeding dogs with desirable characteristics — work ethic, wisdom, companionability, puzzle solving — and matching particular dogs with specific owners. Their kennel of canines grows and so does the reputation of the Sawtelle dogs.

Wroblewski shares with John an eye for minutiae and observes his characters in lavish detail. For example, “His hands were square, symmetrical, neither markedly athletic nor delicate; no bones broken and crookedly healed; knuckles smooth and unscarred save for one moon-pale crescent at the base of his ring finger — a long-ago knife slip, perhaps. Righties always gash their left hands.” The dogs and other animals in Familiaris also have well-defined personalities. There’s a horse named Grandaddy, huge and stolid, a draft animal that can do arithmetic and has a second career as a therapist.

Wroblewski, who now lives in Colorado, draws upon intimate knowledge of northern Wisconsin and its farmland, towns, and forests to build the world of the Sawtelles. He grew up on a farm like Relaxalot, and his father bred dogs for a time. The Kissel Automotive Company was a real place, and locales like The Blind Tigers illuminate rural life during Prohibition.

Familiaris (the title comes from Canis lupis familiaris, the scientific name for the domestic dog) was published in June 2024, sixteen years after Edgar Sawtelle. Both books exhibit meticulous craftsmanship and elegant prose and both were Oprah’s Book Club picks. The biggest flaw in the new work is the abrupt leap that occurs halfway through, when the story jumps ahead 27 years. The Sawtelles’ sons, Gar and Claude, are now teenagers. If you’ve read Edgar Sawtelle, you know that Claude (i.e., Claudius) is the usurper who beds Gar’s wife, Trudy (Gertrude), after Gar’s mysterious death. In Familiaris, we learn that Gar is the “good” brother and that Claude has been “different” since he was a child. Claude’s character is defined by his actions; he becomes part of an illegal dog-fighting business, using his veterinary skills to treat wounded animals. But I wish the book hadn’t skipped so much of their childhood and youth and had spent more time delving into what shaped Claude’s villainous nature. Edgar Sawtelle gave us few clues about that.

Some readers might also be put off by a few meandering plot trails, and I wondered about Wroblewski’s choice of the supernatural element to explain why and how some events take place; it seemed unnecessary and distracting. But Familiaris brings John Sawtelle’s story to its conclusion, and it is rich with delights for readers who can stick it out through the novel’s 975 pages.