The police declared it an accident, but Paul is bothered by the "anomalies" he finds, such as signs of someone cooking steak, a rearrangement of the book shelf, and the question as to what his wife was doing in the apple tree in the first place.

As he attempts to teach Lorelei, Paul remembers how he and Lexy first met, at a yard sale where he bought a square hard-boiled egg mold from her.

Unhappy with his lack of progress, Paul writes a letter to Wendell Hollis (now in prison) in hopes of getting ideas.

In a response letter, he is directed to a man named Remo, who lives in Paul's neighborhood and is in charge of the Cerberus Society, a group dedicated to canine communication.

He is disappointed, though, when the mutilated dog is presented at the podium and is unable to say a single word; the rest of the society oblivious to this.

Lexy named Lorelei for the Rhine maiden who lures sailors to their deaths with her siren song, underscoring the notion that Paul's desire to hear the dog's voice could lead to his undoing.

Despite Parkhurst's flirtations with the supernatural in exploring that question, The Dogs of Babel remains at its core a humanistic parable of the heart's confusions.

"[5] Author Stephen King, also writing for Entertainment Weekly, wrote in a 2007 column on his likes and dislikes, "I believe that 70 percent of the fiction and nonfiction best-seller lists is dreck...

I also believe that a book that sells a million copies--as The Dogs of Babel, by Carolyn Parkhurst, may eventually do--is not automatically trash.