Susan L. Metzger is a psychologist, college English instructor, award-winning author, lover of dogs, an avid bicyclist and hiker, and a mediocre classical violist who took up the violin in middle age. She became interested in cult behavior and abuse in 1983 while she ran the parents' support group for the families whose children were abused in the daycare center detailed in this novel. She was given the privilege of reading personal journals and case records of several homosexual pedophiles who were being treated at a Chicago clinic that specialized in the treatment of child sexual abuse. She began writing her first novel when she was in elementary school. She won fiction contests, served as assistant editor of her high school literary magazine, and after earning two masters degrees, one in psychology and one in business, she returned to her first love and earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Western Michigan University in 1991. Under the pen name Susan Kelleher, she authored The Spirit Dogs Trilogy, a series of stories with talking dogs as the main characters. Volume 1, entitled Spirit Dogs: Heroes In Heaven, is an illustrated short story for those grieving the loss of a canine companion. Volume 2, Spirit Dogs: Life Between Lives, describes Ivan the protagonist in Dog Heaven, at odds with the group he is to guide toward their understanding of who they are as dog spirits and to plan their next lifetimes. There is great adventure as first Ivan alone and then the