An Award-winning Author When a woman unexpectedly loses her lifelong best friend and mentor, she finds herself burdened with the dog he left behind. Now her own battle against grief is intensified by the mute suffering of a huge Great Dane, and by the threat of eviction. Increasingly obsessed with the dog''s care, she comes dangerously close to unraveling. Elegiac and searching, The Friend is both a meditation on loss and a celebration of human-canine devotion.