When a stray dog wanders into Almendral de la Vega, a fading Spanish village left behind by the modern Camino de Santiago, twelve-year-old Nicola Luciani watches as the dog does the unthinkable: drinks from the holy-water font while the priest’s back is turned.
Nicola knows what the dog has done is sinful. But she has plenty of sins of her own.
Then the dog leads her to a man in distress, and what happens next makes Nicola wonder whether she was wrong about the holy water altogether.
The dog wears a collar bearing a single name: La Paz.
As more inexplicable things begin to happen, Nicola begins studying the dog who has wandered into her life. La Paz seems to know whom to trust, when to wait, when to come close—and, somehow, who needs her. The more Nicola watches, the more she wonders whether La Paz understands something she doesn’t, and what a dog might have to teach her about holiness and sin, abandonment and grace.
And the village begins to discover that being left behind and being abandoned may not be the same thing.
La Paz is a story about faith, belonging, the simple truths a tender heart seems to know, and the human complications that make those truths so difficult to see.
La Paz is expected in March, 2027.
Elizabeth Berrett 