Phyllis Reynolds Naylor was inspired to write the book Shiloh by a real-life dog she met while out walking with her husband in the West Virginian countryside. The dog was skinny, covered in ticks, and crept away, trembling, when Mrs. Naylor bent down to pet it—that’s when Mrs. Naylor says she realized it was an abused dog. The dog followed them home to their friends’ house, with whom they were visiting. Mrs. Naylor said that she whistled to the dog for some reason and suddenly the dog was transformed because it ran over to Mrs. Naylor, jumped up, and started licking her face. Mrs. Naylor and her husband couldn’t find the owner of the dog—if it had one—and they had to return home to Maryland. Mrs. Naylor said that she cried all the way home just thinking about that poor dog. Finally, her husband asked her if she was just going to have a nervous breakdown or if she was going to do something about it— and that was when Mrs. Naylor decided to write Shiloh.

How did you decide what to do about that little dog you found in West Virginia?

Well, we had two large cats waiting for us back in Bethesda, so we couldn’t take in a dog. Also, we didn’t really know if the dog we found belonged to someone—someone kind, perhaps, and that it had been mistreated by someone else. We didn’t feel we had the space a dog should have to run and play, and we had to make a quick decision. When we eventually heard that our friends had indeed taken her in, I can’t tell you how excited I was.

Is it hard to write scenes like those in which Shiloh was abused by Judd or attacked by the German shepherd?

I’m as miserable as the reader when I write them. I have to become the dog during these scenes and in the book, I only talk about the yelps. There is a scene in one of the books where Shiloh is lying contentedly on the grass, and Becky is rolling over and over on the dog’s back. I had to feel what it was like to be Shiloh right then, and I had him digging his claws into the ground to keep upright.

Toward the end of the book, Marty’s father says: “You think Judd Travers is the only one around here hardhearted toward his animals? You think he’s the only one who starves ‘em or kicks ‘em or worse? Open up your eyes, Marty…How many times have you walked to the school bus and seen a chained–up dog in somebody’s yard? How many times you ever put your mind to whether or not it’s happy, its ribs sticking out like handles on the sides?”

Is “opening your eyes” one of the main messages of your book Shiloh? Or did that idea just come in the moment when you were writing?

This is one of the things that is highlighted in the book, but not something I started out with. I had been so upset by the real dog I found in West Virginia that I simply sat down to figure out how an eleven-year-old boy could rescue a dog from its abusive owner. In retrospect, I think that the main goal of the book was to explore that gray area between right and wrong, like when Marty asks his dad, “What do you want me to do, Dad? Turn that dog over to Judd Travers so he can be beat and starved all over again?” “I want you to do what’s right!” says the father. “What’s right?” asks Marty. And the father has no answer. It’s right to return a dog to its owner. It’s right to protect a dog from harm. How do you do both? That was Marty’s dilemma.

How did you know the correct West Virginia dialect? Did you research it or just go with your gut?

I just go with my gut. Actually, West Virginians tell me that really isn’t their accent and the voice I heard in my head was my Dad’s, from Mississippi. My husband was from West Virginia, but he didn’t talk like that either. It was just the voice in my head. I try to be careful of dialect in my books so that it doesn’t detract from the story, but this is the way I heard it.

Did you have a concern about highlighting the family’s strong belief in “Jesus” throughout the book in terms of sensitivity to readers of other religions or denominations?

I thought some about it, but it is so a part of the southern rural culture that it seemed important to put it in. I wanted to put in just enough to show this culture, but not enough to seem as though I were highlighting or persuading.

In what year or decade was this book set? Do you think you would need to change anything if the book was set in today’s time and with today’s technology?

I didn’t think too much about the year. It would probably have been in the 1980’s. I think it was 1988 that I first came across the dog when we visited friends in Shiloh, West Virginia. I don’t think I would have changed much. Possibly to give Marty a cell phone, but that’s about all. Once a character has a cell phone in a story, however, the plot can change automatically. When a kid is up against a problem without a cell phone, he often has to solve a problem himself, and this is the whole plot.

What would you have done in Marty’s place the second time he found Shiloh?

I’d like to think I was as brave as Marty, but I wouldn’t have imagined that I could keep that dog quiet. I also think that Marty was trying all this while to think of a way to work this out in a way that would include his parents.

Many writers (myself included) incorporate their own beliefs and feelings into their writing. What parts of you did you write into the book?

Empathy, for one. [Empathy is the ability to imagine how it would feel to live in someone else’s shoes.] But mainly, accepting the fact that there are many times in life where you won’t find a satisfactory solution to a problem in either the law or the Bible, and you have to think for yourself. In voting, for example, both candidates may have faults—neither one being the perfect person for the job. But as a citizen, you have an obligation to choose, and sometimes that’s a difficult decision to make.

Did you ever reconsider putting in the part about feeling bad for Judd at the end?

No, because Marty is a really warm person. But there are obviously times he feels he hates Judd. There are three other books that finish out the Shiloh quartet, which takes Marty deeper and deeper in his feelings and his view of Judd Travers.