Red Dog Farm

Red Dog Farm by Nathaniel Ian Miller
3/4/25; 272 pages
Little, Brown and Company

Red Dog Farm by Nathaniel Ian Miller is a highly recommended coming-of-age story set on a struggling cattle farm in Iceland.

Orri returns home early from his first year at university in Reykjavik to help his father, Pappi, on their farm in Bifröst. For the first time, Pabbi allows Orri to help him on the farm. Orri’s Mamma, a professor at the local university, intimates to him that Pappi is depressed. Farming in Iceland is especially challenging and full of muck, mud, rain, sleet, snow, ice, and bitter cold. It also requires special knowledge and experience to keep everything running.

Once home, Orri reconnects with Rúna, a childhood classmate who’s now a farmer. He also begins a relationship online and through phone calls with Mihan, a part-time student. This is an atmospheric novel about family, friends, and falling in love, as a young man tries to find purpose on a struggling Icelandic cattle farm and a red dog named Rykug

All the characters are portrayed as realistic individuals with strengths, weaknesses, doubts, secrets, and desires. Orri is a thoughtful and articulate young man who is searching for what he wants to do in life. Iceland itself becomes a character along with the strength of the people living there. Orri grows as a person, but the narrative focuses a great deal on the hard work and trials on an Icelandic farm. The interpersonal relationships between the characters does increase as complications arise late in the novel.

Red Dog Farm is a well-written, very eloquent, quiet, slow-paced and plodding novel about the realistic struggles of farming and raising cattle in Iceland. While I enjoyed many aspects of this descriptive novel, I did become a little weary reading about the numerous struggles on the farm.

Thanks to Little, Brown and Company for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.