Saving Dinah is about a family whose comfortable, upper-middle class life is shattered when their border collie, Dinah, is stolen, and Caroline Sheppard – wife, mother and mayoral candidate – sets out to rescue her.
The search for Dinah leads Caroline (age 47), her husband Paul, and their 15-year-old daughter Lara into a netherworld of community censure, official corruption, and animal cruelty: research labs, puppy mills, and, finally, a horrific dog fighting ring.
Caroline's rescue efforts – and the social and political taint of "animal rights" they engender – rub raw the family's inner conflicts and precarious relationships, drive clients away from Paul and Caroline's marketing and public relations firm, and crush Caroline's hopes of becoming the mayor of their small town.
But in the end, Caroline is called to risk her life to rescue Dinah, and her heroic action brings the family together more closely than they ever knew possible. They finally choose to defend the values of courage and compassion as searching for Dinah—and Dinah herself—teaches them a universal lesson of unconditional love.
Saving animals, we discover through Saving Dinah, is as much about saving ourselves as it is about saving them.
