Ben Willow is an 83-year-old widower living in the Allegheny Mountains of West Virginia. This esteemed grouse hunter buried the last of his English setters two years earlier, and has since not felt up to the task of living. And then comes Jenny, a little orphaned setter pup who needs a home. Jenny turns out to be the best bird dog Ben has ever owned, reigning in national field dog trials, but more important, she becomes the old man's reason to live. Then, when Ben is 89, while hunting his favorite mountain, his heart gives out. Jenny is abandoned on the mountain, her master, and reason for being, dead. A winter snowstorm comes in. She is lost, starving, attacked by a pack of wild dogs, and dognapped by a sadistic hermit.

Her hair-raising rescue by Ben's friend Clyde -- the local storekeeper -- requires nothing less than murder.Jenny gets a second chance at devotion when she is given to a 14-year-old boy whose greatest wish is to have a bird dog and become a grouse hunter. But with the gift,Clyde asks of the boy the task of a man -- to share a vision of eternity: to return Ben Willow's ashes to the mountain.Jenny Willow is a story about a great dog, but it is more than a dog story. Beautifully told, steeped in the natural wonders of West Virginia's mountains, it is about the relationship between a man and a dog, one man's transcendent love of freedom, and the loyalty true friendship requires. No one who reads this first novel will ever forget Ben or Jenny Willow.