Shiloh is a Newbery Medal-winning children's novel by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor published in 1991. The 65th book by Naylor, it is the first in a quartet about a young boy and the title character, an abused dog. Naylor decided to write Shiloh after an emotionally taxing experience in West Virginia where she encountered an abused dog.
Narrator and protagonist Marty Preston lives in the hills of Friendly, West Virginia. After finding an abused beagle owned by his brutal neighbor Judd Travers, Marty defies his society's standards of not meddling in each other's business. Marty resolves to steal and hide the dog, naming him Shiloh and fabricating a web of lies to keep his secret. After his theft is discovered, Marty discovers Judd shooting a deer out of season and blackmails him into selling Shiloh to him. Because he lacks the money to buy Shiloh, Marty resolutely works for Judd doing numerous chores.
Primarily a Bildungsroman and adventure novel, the novel depicts the emotional tribulations and maturing of an 11-year-old boy. Some themes of the novel are ethics, consequentialism, religion and morality, and animal–human relationships. Marty learns that morality is confounding and must choose between two unpalatable choices: rescuing the abused Shiloh through stealing and lying or allowing Judd to keep abusing Shiloh.
Reviewers generally gave positive reviews of the book and were impressed by the novel's suspense and vernacular language. In addition to the Newbery Medal, Shiloh has received many state awards voted upon by children, including the Sequoyah Children's Book Award, the Mark Twain Readers Award, and the William Allen White Children's Book Award. In 1996, the book was adapted into a film of the same name. The novel spawned three sequels, Shiloh Season, Saving Shiloh, and A Shiloh Christmas published in 1996, 1997, and 2015, respectively. Shiloh is taught in many elementary school courses in the United States.
Background and publishing
Born in 1933 in Anderson, Indiana, Phyllis Reynolds Naylor was raised in Indiana and Illinois in the 1930s during the Great Depression. During her childhood she was hardly given any toys. Instead, with her parents reading to her every night, books formed a major part of her early years—"the happiest part". Her parents read a variety of literature to her, including Bible stories, The Wind in the Willows, and Mark Twain's novels, until she was 14. After she became a parent, she read to her children in the mornings because of their evening activities. At 16, Naylor wrote a short story for a church magazine, and in her early thirties she published her first book. She has published over 100 books. When she wrote and published Shiloh, her 65th novel, she was living in Bethesda, Maryland with her husband Rex, a speech pathologist whom she married in May 1960. She has two adult sons and four grandchildren.
Naylor writes books for children, teens, and adults. Writing sporadically, Naylor typically takes several years to finish a book. With about 10 notebooks next to her workspace, she writes down story ideas and character traits when she thinks of them. She considered Shiloh to be a deviation from the norm because she finished the first draft in just eight weeks.
Edited by Jonathan Lanman, Shiloh was published by Atheneum Books on September 30, 1991. The novel has been translated into at least 10 languages: Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, and Swedish.
Plot summary
The novel is set in the small town of Friendly, West Virginia, where an eleven-year-old boy named Marty Preston finds a stray beagle wandering in the hills near his house. The dog follows him home, and Marty later names the dog Shiloh. Shiloh's real owner is Judd Travers, who owns several hunting dogs. Fearing for the dog's safety because Judd drinks and treats his hunting dogs poorly, Marty does not want to return Shiloh. His father insists that Shiloh be returned to his rightful owner and they take the dog home to Judd.
Shiloh returns to Marty, who hides him from his family. Concealing Shiloh in the woods in a wire pen he builds, Marty smuggles some of his food to the dog every day. After his mother discovers Marty feeding the dog, he persuades her not to reveal the secret for at least one night. That night, Shiloh is attacked by a German Shepherd Dog while in his makeshift cage and his family discovers Marty has been lying and hiding the dog. After taking the dog to the town doctor, the family must return Shiloh to his rightful owner by Sunday.
Before doing so, Marty travels up to Travers' house to try to convince Travers to allow him to keep Shiloh. Judd does not see Marty approaching, and shoots a doe out of season, which would mean a stiff fine Judd cannot afford. Marty lets Judd know he knows, and attempts to blackmail him out of Shiloh. Judd and Marty eventually negotiate a deal in which Marty will earn Shiloh for 40 dollars, paid with 20 hours of working for Judd. At the end of the first week, Judd says that he will not keep his end of the deal because the evidence of the dead doe has with the passage of time disappeared. Second, the contract that Marty had him sign is worthless in the state of West Virginia without the signature of a witness. Despite Judd's pointed disapproval of his work, Marty continues to work for him. They begin discussing dogs and Judd's father who began physically abusing Judd when he was four years old. In the end, Judd warms to Marty and lets him keep Shiloh.
Autobiographical elements
In a 1992 interview about Shiloh, Naylor said: "Like a patchwork quilt, a novel is made up of things that have happened to me and things I have heard or read about, all mixed up with imaginings". Naylor's characters are frequently based on herself and her two sons. She penned the novel following an excursion with her husband, Rex, to visit their friends, Frank and Trudy Madden, in West Virginia. Naylor and Rex were strolling along a river when they discovered a dog in the grass following them. Dejected and frightened, the dog was "the saddest, most mistreated-looking beagle I'd ever seen", according to Naylor. Because the dog frequently shuddered and slunk forward on her belly, Naylor suspected she had been abused. On a whim, Naylor whistled and the dog rushed forward, lapping Naylor's face. Tailing them until they reached the Maddens' house, the beagle remained under a tree, her paws cushioning her head during the drizzly afternoon. Naylor cried during her and her husband's trip home that night.
Rex asked her if she would have a "nervous breakdown" or if she would "do something about it". That "something" referred to writing a book, which she did. She believed that someone had abused the dog and was confronted by a series of questions:
The Maddens resided near Shiloh, West Virginia, where Naylor found the abused dog in 1989, so she decided to name the book's dog Shiloh. Because the Maddens' post office address is in Friendly, West Virginia, Naylor chose the town as her book's setting. Trudy and Frank Madden adopted the abused dog Naylor had seen. Trudy Madden said in a 1997 interview that Naylor's description of Shiloh, West Virginia, was precise. By following the directions in Shiloh and its sequels, the town's houses, mill, and schoolhouse could be located easily.
Style
Shiloh is told in the first person in main character Marty Preston's voice. The prose has perceptible grammatical errors and a bucolic tone. Arlene Perly Rae of Toronto Star wrote that the novel is written in the "uncomplicated style" for which Naylor is distinguished. Jane Langton of The New York Times Book Review stated that the novel was written in a "comfortable, down-home style". Writing that the main story in Shiloh is Marty's struggle in his mind with morality, Langston noted that it is "presented simply, in a way any third- or fourth-grade reader can understand". Scholar Kathie Cerra praised the novel for its "vivid sensory detail", which enables readers to experience Marty's "inner life of thought and feeling". In Marty's "teem[ing] with life" first-person narrative, he shows how he feels when he tells lies to his parents and when he embraces the wriggling Shiloh.
Academic Leona W. Fisher wrote in Children's Literature Association Quarterly that the novel employs a seldom used yet ingenious literary technique: the story is told with "the sustained internal monologue presented almost exclusively in the present tense". The mores of his society and the actions of adults are strained through Marty's mind concurrently with his emotional agony and ethical judgments. The dialogue of the other characters tempers but does not counteract the "exclusivity of his linguistic point of view" because Marty is the sole narrator. Shiloh has a "compacted time-frame, bounded by the past-tense opening and closing". Fisher noted that because the novel's events are confined to several weeks in the summer, there is no need for a "panoramic sweep" of the actions. The reader can concentrate solely on Marty's ethical crisis. Conveying the mood of the novel is also mostly confined to Marty's thoughts and current action. Naylor uses the past-perfect verb "had" on several occasions to depict the tones of the scenes. This usage conveys turning-points in the story, transferring the reader from the "immediate tension" of the present to a growing cognizance.
Scholars Alethea Helbig and Agnes Perkins wrote that the "Appalachian setting is well evoked, in both its beauty and its code of ethics that Marty must defy to save the dog". Reviewer Ellen Mandel of Booklist wrote that the "West Virginia dialect richly seasons the true-to-life dialogue". Kenneth E. Kowen of School Library Journal perceived an incongruity in Naylor's depiction of Marty's family. He noted that Marty's father is a postman, one of the best paid jobs in suburban settings. In the novel, however, the family is poverty-stricken.
Reviewer Cecilia Goodnow noted that Shiloh is a Bildungsroman and adventure novel. Marty undergoes a physical and emotional transformation in his quest to save Shiloh. After confronting an abusive adult, he mentally grows, concluding: "I saved Shiloh and opened my eyes some. Now that ain't bad for eleven". Salem Press's Carol Ann Gearhart has characterized the novel as domestic realism.
Themes Abuse and love Physically abused as a child, Judd wants to keep Shiloh because he does not comprehend why people are so interested in rescuing the abused dog. No one cared to rescue Judd when he was harmed throughout his youth. Despite Judd's growing into a harsh man, reviewer Hary Sheehan noted, he preserves a glimmer of empathy. Journalist Kate Cavanaugh wrote that Judd's inability to love and cherish Shiloh is borne because of the love his family nurtured in him.
Animal–human relationships Author Timothy Morris wrote that the plot and themes in Shiloh had many parallels to the 1940 novel Lassie Come-Home by Eric Knight. In both novels, boys fall in love with dogs owned by others. The dogs repeatedly return to the children in "mirror imag[e] scenes", while the ethical fathers try to convince them not to betray their morals and fall for the dogs.
Morris wrote that Shiloh's faithfulness to Marty is portrayed in "affective human terms". In the secluded, bucolic West Virginia, Shiloh becomes the masculine friend Marty did not have. The beagle adopts the persona of the brother Marty never had. Marty doggedly believes that Shiloh and other animals are creatures with feelings. Attune with Marty's emotions, the beagle is considered by Marty to be a confidante. On the other hand, in pastoral West Virginia, some adults consider animals to bring only economic benefits to humans. Morris stated that children like Marty defy their rural culture and advance to an upper-class mindset.