Besides Santa Claus, Luis and Tuesday are coming to town

Book Review

By Harold Schachter

On Tuesday, May 3, 2011, “Until Tuesday” was released. It was to become a

New York Times

best-seller for many months.

On Tuesday, May 27, 2014, another book, “Tuesday Tucks Me In,” was released. Was the day of release, Tuesday, just a coincidence or was it by design?

The principal author of both of these books is the much decorated former U.S. Army Capt. Luis Carlos Montalván, a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan and a wounded warrior. Tuesday is the name of his service dog, a golden retriever.

Montalván and Tuesday will be coming to Ramona to make two presentations in the Ramona Branch Library Community Room. On Tuesday, Dec. 16, at 6:30 p.m., he will speak about how they saved each other.

This true story is recounted in “Until Tuesday.” While this reviewer does not consider himself an animal or pet person as his late wife was, this book was a riveting education of what a service dog is. If you, the reader, didn’t know, “Until Tuesday” will teach you and you will be amazed at what these service dogs are trained to do for their disabled master or mistress.

Montalván is 54 years old. He trained to be a soldier when he was a teenager. Tuesday was trained to be a service dog from the age of 3 days after he was born. He can open and close doors, turn lights on and off, fetch, and respond to 140 different verbal commands. Montalván believes that Tuesday can read his mind and knows what his master is thinking even before he is aware of it.

On Wednesday, Dec. 17, at 10:30 a.m., Montalván and Tuesday will again appear in the library’s Community Room to talk about his second book, a young children’s book, “Tuesday Tucks Me In.” The amazon.com website proffers that “Tuesday Tucks Me In” is age-appropriate for 4- to 8-year-olds or for children in kindergarten through the third grade.

“Until Tuesday” is 251.3 pages, divided into 24 chapters and an epilogue, which is like a 25th chapter. So you can mathematically see that a chapter averages about 10 pages. It is a quick read and contains archival black and white photographs but no index, bibliography or notes.

The book is divided into three parts. Part I is about Tuesday and is roughly 15 percent of the book. Part II is about Luis and takes up roughly 25 percent of the book, and Part III is about Tuesday and Montalván and constitutes about 60 percent of the book. This reviewer found most of this book age-appropriate for pre-teens on up, but a minor’s parents or guardian is cautioned that certain segments of Part II may NOT be age-appropriate for youths since it relates the violence of Montalván’s experience in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As testament to both books’ high praise by their readers, as of Wednesday, Dec. 3, “Until Tuesday” had garnered 1,881 reader-reviewers’ ratings on the amazon.com website, 88.94 percent of whom had accorded it 5 Stars out of 5 Stars maximum. And an additional 6.7 percent of reader-reviewers had accorded it a 4-Star rating, so you don’t have to take this reviewer’s word for it.

With regard to “Tuesday Tucks Me In,” it had garnered 214 reader-reviewer ratings of which 95.70 percent have accorded it 5 Stars, and an additional 2.34 percent have rated it 4 Stars.

Montalván has graduate degrees from Columbia University and has been an op-ed contributor to many major newspapers, so he is an experienced writer.

If you can attend either of his appearances in Ramona, this reviewer believes that you will find it time well spent and be glad you did.