A Necessary Woman — Peggy Webb

A mother looking for a miracle. An outcast looking for a home. And the remarkable dog who brings them together. In the last summer of Camelot, President Kennedy urged a nation toward unity. In November, he was struck down by an assassin's bullet. Against that backdrop of enormous hope and great heartbreak, a teenaged girl whose only family is a stray dog named Catfish and a desperate mother whose only living child seems broken beyond repair discover the true meaning of family and of grace. Jolene has been tossed away like a watermelon rind and has no hope for the future until Margo Livingston finds her living in a raggedy tent and gives her the job as nanny to her daughter Lily. There is one caveat: Jolene has to bring along her dog, a big yellow retriever who seems to have a knack with Lily, a child with autism. But the entire country is up in arms over race, and not everybody in the small Southern town is happy to see the high school principal bring a bi-racial teenager into her home. Adding to the turmoil are two long-time friends whose dark secrets could spell disaster for Jolene and Margo's long-distance husband whose schemes could rip the family apart. Can a dog, who is said to hold a spark of the divine, work a miracle? Find out why one reviewer calls this, “the best book of the year.”