It was a young person’s book which I read when I was 10 or 12 years old in Canada. It would have been in the late 1960’s or early 1970’s when I found it in our school library. It was set in the Southern USA and I think that the period was shortly after WWII. The book was the story of a boy that was staying with a family in a big old rural home. There was something about hunting raccoons at night with dogs. I think there was actually quite a bit about the dogs and something sad happened to one of them. There was something about hearing trains running in the distance at night. There was something sad associated with this (maybe to do with the dogs?). The family had a black (I think) cook with whom the boy spent considerable time. She was rather nurturing. And a WWII vet who was rather troubled would come to the back/kitchen door and she would give him food. I think that the boy was afraid of him. My recollection is that it was a rather haunting, sentimental, sad and yet hopeful story. I think that the boy was trying to determine how he fit into the world.
Stump the Bookseller
New format, same book stumper solving.
The details about the dogs sounds a lot like Where the Red Fern Grows, but I don’t recall anything about a WWII vet in the story.
Could it be Follensby’s Folly?
Sounder?
Could it be Skinny by Robert Burch? I came across this Dell Yearling book not too long ago and was surprised I’ve never heard of it. It is about an orphan about 14. He lives at and works for a hotel in Georgia and the cook’s name is Peachy. Nothing about hunting with dogs, but a carnival comes to town and he meets a boy named Calvin who works at it. He makes a plan to run away with Calvin so that he can’t be put into an orphanage. 1964, ill. Don Sibley.