Ashley Bell. Dean Koontz

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       The Girl Whose Mind Was Always Spinning

      THE YEAR THAT BIBI BLAIR TURNED TEN, WHICH was twelve years before Death came calling on her, the sky was a grim vault of sorrow nearly every day from January through mid-March, and the angels cried down flood after flood upon Southern California. That was how she described it in her diary: a sorrowing sky, the days and nights washed by the grief of angels, though she didn’t speculate on the cause of their celestial distress.

      Even then, she was writing short stories in addition to keeping a diary. That rainy winter, her simple narratives were all about a dog named Jasper whose cruel master had abandoned him on a storm-swept beach south of San Francisco. In each of those little fictions, Jasper, a gray-and-black mongrel, found a new home. But at the end of every tale, his haven proved impermanent for one reason or another. Determined to keep his spirits high, good Jasper traveled southward, hundreds of miles, in search of his forever home.

      Bibi