That Dog Don’t Bark is a love story between teens Jackson and Angel, but at the same time it tackles some serious social problems that existed back in the time frame of the novel (1975) and still exist today.
First is the foster care system. I worked with at-risk children and youth for a number of years, helping them recover and heal from sometimes horrendous childhoods as they lived in our residential treatment homes, staffed with counsellors and youth workers who I was proud to work with. I doubt the average person would believe the tortures some of these youth suffered while they were children. They came to us not trusting adults, self-medicating with drugs and alcohol, and acting out criminally so that someone might notice and ask why.
Part of my job was to recruit, train, and support foster families for the youth who graduated our programs. Doing so I met some amazing foster parents who went above and beyond the pittance the Ministry for Family and Children paid them. One of the best I ever met was a single, First Nations, Buddhist, mother who took in two of our most challenging youth; one (a girl) who came to us on charges of attempted murder, was suffering a deep depression, self-injury, and was suicidal; the second was a boy who was literally raised in a crack house and was so far down the trail of escalating violent crimes that it was all I could do to convince his Probation Officer to give him to me under house arrest instead of sending him to juvenile detention for two years. They both turned it around and that foster mom was a perfect fit for them - they both graduated high school on the honour roll and went on to college.
The other part of my job was to rescue children and youth from abusive or neglectful foster homes; children fed nothing but a steady diet of macaroni and cheese; a child beaten because she was transgendered; a child taught to perform fellatio at the age of six, a child sexually abused nightly by the teenaged son of the foster family. Those stories could go on for pages.
In defence of Ministry Social Workers; they are overworked in a system that has had its budgets stripped to the bone by governments who don't care about disposable kids because they don't vote and no one is there to advocate for them. These Social Workers are doing the best they can with what little they have.
Because of this there are youth who fall through the cracks in the foster system - trading use of their bodies for a couch, food, and drugs from a sexual predator. For them, at least this arrangement holds no surprises and no false promises.
The other central issue in the novel is child sex trafficking; young girls and boys, lured off the streets with drugs, sex, and the promise of wealth are forced into prostitution once they are addicted to the drugs that numb them. This was happening back then and is still happening today. And if you think it only occurs ‘somewhere else’, think again; I live outside a small town of 30,000 people and it’s happening there - a lot. Vancouver - where the novel takes place - has a stretch of dark streets known as the ‘kiddie stroll’ where teens and children can be had for a few dollars.
The third backdrop is the local organized crime families that I wrote extensively about in the Gangster series. They are the least of the social problems of the world - they don’t prey on children and all the ones I met had a social conscience.
All of this is the world that Jackson and Angel find themselves in, surviving as best they can, and learning how to love each other while they do it. When they witness a dear friend taken by international criminals, addicted to heroin, groomed to be a prostitute, then sent overseas with 19 other girls sealed inside a cargo container equipped with a port-a-potty and buckets of drugged water and food, they decide they have to do something about it. They find themselves alone; cops are on the take, a crime reporter is reluctant to expose the crime, and even the local mob bosses don’t seem to care.
Every crime in the novel is true - a few I committed myself in my younger, wilder years - the sex slave trade I researched and yes; shipping drugged girls overseas in a cargo container is a real thing.
I pulled no punches in telling the story, so be warned; parts of it will make you squirm, but I hope it will also make you hug your children a little tighter. But as I said; That Dog Don’t Bark is a love story that is sweet and heart warming, with just a little arson and murder.
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