During our conversation for the recent "Central Oregon Pets" issue about her newest book, "Never Leave the Dogs Behind," New York Times bestselling author, Brianna Madia, invited me behind the scenes, diving beyond her public persona as a turquoise-loving fashionista and "Everyone's Eccentric Aunt," and I'm bringing readers along for the ride.
"I think we live a lot of lives, if we're lucky, in one life. I feel like I have lived three distinct lives already and I've loved each of them," said Madia, unveiling her profound sense of perspective about these intentionally unplanned versions of her life.
Drawn to the unforgiving nature of the western desert's uninhabited places, preferring far-off lands down dusty dirt roads 50 miles from pavement and winding sandstone canyons engraved deep into the crevices of rugged earth, Madia infuses her writing with the inevitable introspection and raw vulnerability that comes from a life lived outside the bounds — a life where sanctuary is found in the wild, where breakdowns and mishaps are expected and where a dog is never just a dog.
"All we end up being in this life are the stories we can tell. I intended to make them good ones," Madia writes in her first memoir, "Nowhere for Very Long," cataloguing the era of her life where she "set out to prove what I didn't need," mapping her unconventional trajectory fully into the margins of a life she'd once straddled.
She'd come west from Connecticut for the mountains, but it was in the vast, red desert with her dogs where Madia truly came alive. A world she'd never known existed that quickly became the motivation of her own, eventually moving full-time into an old behemoth of a van, a bright orange, lifted 4x4 Ford E350 named Bertha.
Thoughtfully articulated in "Never Leave the Dogs Behind" is the understanding that in life, like in nature, "Sometimes there need be a great rumbling, an explosion, a brutal disaster, before the next beautiful thing can be made."
"Never Leave the Dogs Behind" traces her continued story in a fashion not unlike that of the winding and muddy Colorado river where she's spent much of her time: beautifully chaotic and feral. It's the story of what happened when her dream life became a nightmare and how a plot of barren land supported her while a pack of dogs saved her life.
"I just feel like when your whole world is crumbling, you just kinda have to look through the cracks at what is outside of it," Madia shares, adding, "I looked at it as, that was a really beautiful chapter. It ended horribly, but what if I looked at this as not [just] the end of something, but the beginning of something else. I remember thinking all of a sudden, wow, I could have two great loves in my life. I could experience a lot of these things I never thought I would feel again because I lost it once before."
Revealing the why behind what she shares both on social media and in her two memoirs, Madia simply asks herself, "What can I put out in the world that I'm proud of? And it's just to be deeply, deeply human." Candidly adding about her newest book, "I never ever want to make people feel like I have all the answers. I just like sharing my mistakes, my lessons. It feels like a safe place to help people from in a way that feels genuine to me."
On the tough act of editing her especially vulnerable story in "Never Leave the Dogs Behind," Madia says, "There were so many details that didn't further the story. They didn't further my involvement in the story, and I was just like, take out any little thing that doesn't feel like yours, or that gives you a little, 'I don't know if I should be saying that much information.' By the time I got to that final draft, what I had left in felt like enough to paint a picture so that I could tell the reader what it was like for me to be inside of that picture."
Reliving her stories while recording both audiobooks were emotional moments for Madia and the studio team, who all cried during her recording of Dagwood's accident in "Nowhere for Very Long." Just as powerful are her stories in "Never Leave the Dogs Behind," and she encourages readers to purchase the audiobook, resonating with her tales in the unique way only experienced by hearing them told aloud.
Pre-ordering books is one of the best ways to support authors and Madia's upcoming memoir, "Never Leave the Dogs Behind," releasing April 2, can be pre-ordered both in signed hardcover and audiobook through her website. Followers can also keep up with Madia and her canine crusades on Instagram. The author will be in Bend for a reading with Roundabout Books on the opening day of the book, April 2, at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship.
