There's nothing more cherished by Southerners than their dogs. Dogs, and their Southern keepers, know when it's time to eat and when it's time to be quiet. Both know when to move slow and when to bare teeth. In Southern literature, dogs have taken prominent roles as muses and characters, confessors and conspirators. Southerners love their dogs almost as much as their mammas, and Southern Dogs and Their People aims to celebrate that love.

Photographer P.S. Davis has been taking photographs of dogs around her home of Greenville, Alabama, for many years. Her photographs chronicle the lives of dogs and their owners, from the poodles of a rich widow to the mutt of a homeless veteran. As a photographer, Davis is known for her tenderness and steely-eyed wit, her sense of the perfect and the absurd. Editor Roberta Gamble, Davis's friend and neighbor, has brought together a wide-ranging collection of quotations from great Southern writers, including William Faulkner, Lee Smith, Harry Cress, Bailey White, Larry Brown, Clyde Edgerton, Eudora Welty, Zora Neale Hurston, James Dickey, Anne Tyler, James Tate, Flannery O'Connor, Bobbie Ann Mason, and many others. This fond tribute by two dog-loving Southerners is the perfect gift for every dog lover.