STEPDOG

Stepdog is the hilarious and heartwarming tale of a woman who has finally met the man of her dreams—and the dog of her nightmares.

After more than three decades of happy single womanhood, Mia Navarro wasn’t really looking to change her relationship status. The idea of being a step-anything to anyone was foreign to her, something she never thought about. . . . Until she fell in love with Jim and agreed to marry him. As it turns out, the marriage is pretty wonderful, the stepkids were, well, typical pre-teens, the weather in Los Angeles perfect. But life is not spotless. The spots belong to Jim’s mutt, Eddie. Possessive and jealous, Eddie behaves like Jim’s mistress—if a mistress could bark and compete for space on his beloved’s lap. As time goes on, a full-on war ensues. Mia slams the door in Eddie’s face, cordons off the house into dog- and wife-territories, and leaves the back door open . . . by, er, accident, of course. She even tries to leave Eddie behind in California when she and Jim abruptly relocate to New York. But in the end, it’s clear that not even a wife can come between man and dog. As Eddie ages, Mia softens, and as with any new family struggling to blend, the two must make peace with each other.

Ultimately, Stepdog is a triumphant story about finding love at an unexpected stage in life and the many unforeseen obstacles—not only of the four-legged variety—that can get in the way on the road to happily ever after.

Mireya Navarro is a housing reporter for The New York Times. Prior to that, she was the paper’s West Coast style correspondent, covering lifestyle trends and entertainment. After the events of September 11, 2001, Mireya was part of the team that wrote “Portraits of Grief,” the profiles that documented the lives of those killed in the terrorist attacks. She was also a member of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 for the New York Times series “How Race is Lived in America,” which was later issued as a book. She has taught journalism as an adjunct professor at Columbia University and the City University of New York, and as a visiting faculty member for the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education in California. She was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and currently lives in New York.